Jackson Free Press

Jackson officials say a new $8.6 million, 54-inch water main will help keep water pressure up during freezing weather and will move the city one step closer to closing the 98-year-old J.H. Fewell Water Treatment Plant.

The new pipes will extend a water line that currently runs from the Fewell Treatment Plant on Laurel Street to Westbrook Road, north to the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant off Lake Harbour Drive near the Country Club of Jackson. Public Works director Dan Gaillet said the ultimate goal in linking the two treatment plants is to move all the water now treated at the aging J.H. Fewell plant to the more up-to-date O.B. Curtis plant. Gaillet said linking the two plants will help maintain water pressure if pipes freeze as they did in the winter of 2010.

"We strongly believe that, yes, we'd still have had all the water breaks and still had all the boilwater notices," Gaillet said. "If the two plants had been working together and pushing all this water through the system, we felt like we could keep the system flooded enough to keep the pressure up in the system."

Gaillet said he expects workers to break ground on the new line in June. The city's contract allows lead constructor Morgan Contracting one year to get the pipe in the ground, but Gaillet said the company anticipates finishing the project by the end of 2012.

Both plants will continue to operate for a time after the connection is complete.

The Jackson City Council approved the contract with Morgan Contracting May 15 to install the new 54-inch water main. Morgan was the low bidder for the project, with a bid of just over $8.6 million.

The 6-1 vote came the day after a council work session where Ward 7 Councilwoman Margaret Barrett-Simon and Ward 1 Councilman Quentin Whitwell expressed a desire to hire a local company to do the work instead of the Baker, Fla.-based Morgan Contracting. Ward 3 Councilwoman LaRita Cooper-Stokes was the lone dissenting vote.

Gaillet said the next-lowest bidder, Hemphill Construction, a local company he did not name at the meeting, turned in a bid $85,000 higher than Morgan Contracting's bid. Whitwell said he would make a motion at the regular council meeting the next day to create a preference law in Jackson that would give the council the ability to award the water-main contract to a local bidder.

Whitwell and Barrett-Simon's views on the contract turned 180 degrees, though, between the May 15 work session and the regular meeting the next day. They both said, after looking into Morgan Contracting's bid and talking to Gaillet, they supported the contract.

Whitwell changed his mind, he said, because he learned there will be extensive local involvement and the project is a necessity. "First of all, the contractor whose name is on there is not the only contractor that's involved," Whitwell said.

Three Jackson-based companies—Echelon Enterprises, T.F.I.C. and T&L Contractors—will work with Morgan Contracting on the project, Gaillet said.

Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. Said at the regular council meeting that about $4.2 million of the $8.6-million project will go to the local subcontractors. African American-owned companies will get about $1.1 million from the contract.

Residents should expect little disturbance during the construction, Gaillet said, because contractors will lay the pipeline near the banks of the Pearl River between the east end of Westbrook Road and Lake Harbor Drive. He also does not anticipate any residential water outages due to construction.