The Board of Mayor and Aldermen is hoping to hire a new engineer by early January and restart the city’s auxiliary waterline project with a goal of completing it before the city’s elections in 2017.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. and Aldermen Michael Mayfield and Willis Thompson said they are in the process of looking for a new engineer to replace IMS Engineers of Jackson, which had been the waterline project engineer since 2010. The board in November cancelled its contract with IMS after bids for the project exceeded the budget for the project.

Flaggs said he plans to recommend EJES Engineering, which has an office in Jackson as the project engineer. Mayfield and Thompson, however, did not give a preference.

Mayfield said Friday he hopes the board will hold a work session on hiring an engineer sometime this week, and will hire someone soon after.

“I’m hoping we can meet on it and choose an engineer,” he said. “We have talked to at least two engineers, one is more local and the other is based in Jackson. We’re just taking it day by day until we can nail an engineering firm down, and hopefully, we can hit the ground running and get this project taken care of.”

Flaggs said he intends to recommend EJES at the board’s first meeting in January, adding he plans to ask the state’s congressional delegations for more money for the project when he makes his annual trip to Washington, D.C., next month.

“We can start the new year off with a new beginning of trying to complete the 592 project as a priority for the city. Hopefully, we can have this done before the next administration, that’s my goal,” he said. “We’ve learned from the last arrangement, so it shouldn’t take us so long.”

“We know the scope of work,” Thompson said. “We know what we want; we just want to find somebody to deliver. The reason for the line is to ensure redundancy of the water system and we have to have that in place. It’s probably the most important project of all the projects we’ve taken on, so I would like to see it done as soon as possible.”

Known by city officials as the “592 water project,” there is a $2.45 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers grant paying for part of the work, and the budget for the waterline is $3.565 million. When the board opened the bids on the project Aug. 10, they were more than double the project’s budget.

Four companies submitted bids on the project. The $8.57 million bid from T.L. Wallace Construction of Columbia was the highest of the four, with DirtWorks Inc. of Vicksburg’ coming in at $8.346 million. S.J. Louis Construction of Texas and Hemphill construction of Florence had the lowest bids of $7.626 million and $7.329 million, respectively.

Part of the reason for the high bids, city officials believe was the waterline’s proposed route, which took it across the Vicksburg National Military Park, then down Fort Hill Drive to tie into an existing line at Jackson Street.

“We spent 2 to 3 years trying to make that project work by taking the route that went down North Washington and turned and went up Fort Hill,” Mayfield said, “and when we got the bids in, they were astronomical, I mean you would have to come up with $2 to $3 million more than we had anticipated.”

Flaggs and Mayfield hope the engineers hired for the project will look at taking the auxiliary line south on North Washington Street.

“If we can reroute it, it shouldn’t be as expensive and we shouldn’t have to affect the residential neighborhoods,” Flaggs said. “We haven’t run up on one reason why we can’t — it’s at least one option, an option that will significantly reduce the cost of construction and the timeline for construction. I don’t know if it can be done, but we’ll see.”

Mayfield agrees, saying the route along North Washington is more feasible.

Thompson, however, is cautious about taking the line along Washington, which is the route of the current line.

“You want to do it within budget, but at the same time, you want a project that’s going to make sense,” he said. “I don’t think it needs to be directly parallel to the one you have now. You want to have in such way if you lose a section of Washington Street or the route the line is on, you want a good alternate route that wouldn’t be affected.

“You don’t want to lose both lines. You want to have a good route you can take to provide an alternate water line to the city, and do it at a cost you can afford.”

He added the city has the money for the project. What it needs, he said, is a scope of work and a timeline to get the line engineered and installed.

“I don’t think it’s going to be an issue finding someone to do it, I just think we need to make it top priority and go ahead and get started,” he said.

“I’m hoping by the first part of the year we have an engineering firm in place and from there we can start the process over and hopefully come up with a project that will be good for the city and Warren County and we can go from there with a fresh start,” Mayfield said.

Work on the waterline began in 2010, after a landslide at the construction of the Jesse Brent Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Center threatened the city’s main waterline.

IMS Engineers was hired to handle the water project in November 2010 during the administration of former Mayor Paul Winfield. The company replaced the Jackson engineering firm Allen & Hoshall, which had been contracted for engineering services to the city for 20 years.

Planning for the project then lapsed until February 2014, when Flaggs revived it.