A project believed to be the Mississippi Department of Transportation’s largest-ever slope-stabilization is nearing completion on the west side of U.S. 61 South.

The four-lane artery built in the 1960s by cutting down the peak of Signal Hill and using that soil for fill has been a challenge for engineers many times.

In the most recent round, the southbound lanes were closed in April 2005 with the Mississippi Department of Transportation pledging not to attempt repairs until a lasting solution could be found.

This time, 203 concrete blocks with square tops and weighing thousands of pounds each are being cabled to bedrock hundreds of feet below the surface of the hillside.

Project superintendent Deke Triplett of contractor Hayward Baker said Wednesday that about 150 of the anchors are in place and work on the fifth of five rows of blocks is expected to begin by about Saturday.

&#8220We’ve done a lot of slope-stabilization work,” Triplett said of Hayward Baker, based in Odenton, Md. &#8220It works well.”

The company has the stabilization contract for a bid price of about $5 million.

Traffic will continue to be diverted onto northbound lanes through the construction period. Stabilization is expected to be completed about Oct. 31. Rebuilding of the roadway, which will be under a separate contract, will follow and could take an additional six months, MDOT officials have said.

If that project begins immediately following the bank-stabilization it could be complete by about May. That’s close to the initial estimate of two years.

Triplett said the site has not received too much rain and crews have been able to work about 12 hours a day most days.

Workers were using a hydraulic jack to tighten and test the steel cables being used to anchor the blocks, Triplett said. The tightness of the cables is to be re-tested after about 28 days to make sure they haven’t moved, Triplett said.

Measurements can be taken to one one-thousandth of an inch, Triplett added.

Drilling is done using an oil-rig-like drill and used oil-field bits that are left in the bedrock, Triplett said. Each drill is manned by a crew of four to five people with two to three others supporting.

Once bedrock, mainly limestone, is reached about 7,000 pounds of grout is injected to harden and form an anchor for the cable. Each block is connected to an anchor with 15 cables and is tightened using a hydraulic jack that applies about 465,000 pounds of pressure, Triplett said.

Hayward Baker has used the same technique to stabilize banks in states such as Alabama, Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee, Triplett said.