[1/13/05]JACKSON Officials from Claiborne County and the Mississippi Department of Transportation still disagree on whether the U.S. 61 bridge over Bayou Pierre should stay when a new bypass is built around Port Gibson.

And, in the end, it may not matter what either group thinks.

Local and state officials have reached a rough consensus on a route, which turns east from the Bayou Pierre bridge just north of the historic city and runs parallel to the river’s flood plain before turning back west after it passes over the Natchez Trace.

Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency must approve any prospective construction in a flood plain, which won’t be a rubber stamp, said MDOT environmental engineer Claiborne Barnwell.

“We’ve got a big black cloud hanging overhead right now,” Barnwell said.

But if the bypass is built referred to as Alternate I by MDOT there will have to be a bridge over Bayou Pierre. The dispute is over where the bridge will be. Highway department officials say the current two-lane bridge will have to go anyway because it’s old, not up to current safety standards and would cost as much to fix as to replace. If the bridge is moved, route-planning becomes considerably less complex.

Officials from Claiborne County and the City of Port Gibson say a bridge anywhere else will kill the city’s tourist industry.

“A lot of our businesses, a lot of our citizens have come to us and expressed that we don’t want that bridge closed under any circumstances,” Mayor Amelda Arnold said.

“It’s up to (MDOT) to figure out how to make it work,” Arnold said.

Something will have to be done to the bridge, though, Barnwell replied.

“Some of these impacts that I’ is causing are inevitable even if we don’t build I,” Barnwell said.

The highway department is still gathering information to send to federal officials in late spring. Assuming federal officials approve the action, public hearings will be held in the fall.

MDOT district engineer Walter Lyons said citizens might see construction on a bypass in five years “at best.”

When created, U.S. 61 stretched from downtown New Orleans to downtown Chicago, running through the center of towns along its route, including Vicksburg, Natchez and Fayette.

Bypasses looping around larger cities were completed decades ago. The 1987 highway program was supposed to complete that process for smaller towns and four-lane all of U.S. 61 plus hundreds of other highway miles statewide.

The project is the final component in the program, MDOT Central District Commissioner Dick Hall said. Finding a route through Claiborne County is difficult, Hall said, because the road must avoid marshes, historic homes and churches, and Grand Gulf Nuclear Station. Wednesday’s two-hour meeting marked the ninth time officials have tried to agree on a route.

“We’ve been working on this thing forever. We got a little closer today,” Hall said.