After winning a long-awaited $5 million appropriation, Vicksburg officials are &#8220very confident” Congress will approve an additional $7 million to complete a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers interpretive museum, Mayor Laurence Leyens said Wednesday.

Leyens spoke as part of the public comments forum at the Mississippi River Commission’s annual high water inspection aboard the Motor Vessel Mississippi, docked only blocks from the City Front site planned for the museum.

Leyens said the request for completion funding was made during a number of city officials’ visit to Washington, D.C., in February, and they came away optimistic the money could be awarded in Congress’ next round of appropriations to the Corps later this year. The additional appropriation, if it goes through, would be used to construct the museum building itself, said Vicksburg District Senior Project Manager Tommy Hengst. It would include displays of the previous MV Mississippi, now owned by Vicksburg and tied up in the Vicksburg Harbor.

&#8220Sen. (Trent) Lott was very clear: ‘Get construction started now if you want to see continued funding,’” Leyens told the commission.

After the inspection, he said, &#8220We got a complete affirmation we will get it.”

In Washington, the city submitted a proposal to transfer the older version of the towboat and the land proposed for the museum itself, to the Corps. Approval of the proposal from Washington is expected to take 90 days, Leyens said.

A contract award to begin construction on the rest of the project, which includes plans to move the 100-year-old iron Fairground Street bridge to the site at the old Levee Street Depot, is not expected until mid-2008 with completion in 2009 at the earliest, Hengst said.

The Corps received $51 million from Congress from the 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations Act. Out of that, it was authorized to use $5 million for the project, officially named the Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Site.

That money came 14 years after Congress originally authorized the project in 1992 with $2 million for planning. In 1995, Mayor Joe Loviza’s administration paid the Corps $1 for the retired MV Mississippi, a 218-foot towboat built in 1961 that served for 30 years as the flagship of its work fleet, to serve as the museum’s primary attraction.

Hengst said the $5 million appropriation will go largely toward moving and partly refurbishing the 2,000-ton vessel downriver from the harbor where it has been moored since it was purchased by the city, to the planned museum site, along Jackson Street between Washington and Levee streets. The city paid $620,000 to secure that spot for the museum before any money was appropriated, Leyens said.

Hengst said this morning the Corps expects to begin advertising a contract for moving the 2,000-ton vessel in May.

&#8220We’d like to select a contractor in late August,” he said.

Leyens called the interior of the boat &#8220immaculate,” but stressed to the commission that the city is &#8220anxious” to transfer the Mississippi to the Corps.

&#8220It’s been sitting there and it’s costing us a fortune,” to move in accordance with the river level, he said after the inspection.

The museum will depict the history of the Corps, the branch of the U.S. Army assigned to civil works, including flood control and navigation on the Mississippi River, and tours of the boat will also be available.