Vicksburg will begin the process of acquiring land for the Corps of Engineers’ $3.9 million widening of the Yazoo Diversion Canal, officials said Monday.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted unanimously at its regular meeting to authorize Mayor Laurence Leyens to execute easements on four private properties covering about 45 acres along the canal.

The resolution also requested modification of the grant agreement between the city and the Mississippi Development Authority, which will provide up to $500,000 for the project, and formally approved agreements with three businesses to help secure the grant, said City Attorney Nancy Thomas.

Falco Chemical, Power Transport Services and Magnolia Marine agreed to invest $3 million and provide 25 jobs along the canal after the project is completed, Thomas said.

The original $330,900 County Development Block Grant from the MDA, awarded during the Joe Loviza administration, was based on a commitment from Hancor Inc. to extend a rail line from the canal to its headquarters on U.S. 61 South, Thomas said, but plans for that deal fell through.

&#8220So we’re switching the money from that project to the canal project,” she said.

More than $3.2 million of the $3.9 million projected cost for the project will be federally funded, with the city and the Warren County Port Commission sharing around $698,000 in local costs, much of which will come from the MDA grant.

Warren County supervisors also acted on the project Monday, approving execution of two easement abandonments along DeSoto Island, on the Louisiana side of the Yazoo Diversion Canal. The Port Commission had approved giving up the easement in February to the City of Vicksburg as a way to move along local efforts to get plans off the ground to widen the canal.

The canal was excavated more than 100 years ago after the Mississippi River, which formerly passed City Front, changed course.

It rerouted the Yazoo River and connected the Mississippi with what has been developed as the Port of Vicksburg.

Plans for the widening call for turning a 150-foot bottom width into a 250-foot bottom width from the junction with the Mississippi River to Glass Bayou and 200-foot bottom from there to the entrance to the harbor channel.

Officials began looking at widening the canal in the 1990s, when the tonnage moved to and from the Mississippi River and the E.W. Haining Industrial Center increased from 3 million tons to 5 million from 1990 to 1992.

Mayor Laurence Leyens said the city could use the extra space in the canal to add docks to city front.

In other business, the board: