Vicksburg’s wastewater treatment plant on Rifle Range Road could soon be under new management.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Friday authorized city clerk Walter Osborne to advertise for proposals from private companies to operate and manage the city’s 45-year-old wastewater treatment plant.

“With the things that are going on, I think we would be better off if we outsourced it,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said, citing age, equipment problems at the plant, and the city’s 5-year-old consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency to upgrade its 110-year-old sewer collection system.

“It will be beneficial to the taxpayer in a way that we think the oversight will be far better than city employees, and the training is another issue,” Flaggs said.

“Those areas (water and wastewater treatment), you have to have unique training and you have to be certified by the state, and we haven’t done a good job keeping up with certification of the employees, and this way, we’ll have somebody responsible for that.”

Flaggs discussed privatizing the wastewater treatment plant in November, and the board approved a contract with Trilogy Engineering Services of Jackson to prepare a request for proposals to operate and manage the wastewater treatment plant on Rifle Range Road.

Trilogy is the same company the board hired to prepare a request for proposals to operate and manage the city’s water treatment plant on Haining Road.

The city in 2016 approved a 10-year contract with Georgia-based ESG Operations to manage and operate the water plant for $726,500 a year, or $60,541.66 a month, plus an annual maintenance fee of $100,000, or $8,333 a month.

The consent degree with the EPA was signed in 2013 under the administration of former Mayor Paul Winfield after tests indicated the city was allowing untreated sewage to enter local streams and the Mississippi River. Under the decree, the city must assess, map, repair, replace and upgrade the sewer lines.

The wastewater treatment plant went on line in 1973.

It has had two major problems not connected with the consent decree. A clarifier at the plant was damaged when it popped out of the ground, forcing the city to spend $1.3 million to replace it. In April 2017, heavy rains caused to nearby creeks to swell and flood the plant, putting 2 feet of water in the buildings and damaging motors in the plant’s power plant.