The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Vicksburg District entered into a Project Partnership Agreement (PPA) with the City of Olive Branch, Mississippi, Aug. 24, 2021, as part of the Mississippi Environmental Infrastructure Program (Section 592) yesterday.

The signing ceremony was held at Olive Branch City Hall. Mayor Ken Adams signed the Partnership Project Agreement for the City of Olive Branch, and Col. Robert Hilliard, Vicksburg District commander, signed for USACE.

“We look forward to providing quality engineering solutions to the City of Olive Branch,” Col. Hilliard said. “Our local partnerships are incredibly valuable and will leave long-lasting, positive impacts for the local community.”

The City of Olive Branch’s sanitary sewer line rehabilitation project will be rehabilitated at a cost of $1.6 million. The effort will include the design and construction of a project to replace, rehabilitate and extend sanitary sewer lines that are experiencing high infiltration and inflow rates due to the system’s age and type.  These cost-share agreements will be 75 percent federally funded and 25 percent non-federally funded.

The Section 592 Program provides environmental assistance to non-federal interests in Mississippi. Assistance may be in the form of design and construction assistance for water-related environmental infrastructure and resource protection and development projects in Mississippi. This includes, but is not limited to, projects for wastewater treatment and related facilities, elimination or control of combined sewer overflow, water supply and related facilities, environmental restoration, and surface water resource protection and development. Assistance may be provided only for projects that are publicly owned and the non-federal interest must enter into a written cost-share agreement to furnish its required cooperation for the project.

The USACE Vicksburg District is engineering solutions to the nation’s toughest challenges. The Vicksburg District encompasses a 68,000-square-mile area across portions of Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, that holds nine major river basins and incorporates approximately 460 miles of mainline Mississippi River levees. The Vicksburg District is engaged in hundreds of projects and employs approximately 1,100 personnel.