Southbound lanes of U.S. 61 South at Signal Hill may be reopened by this time next year and, if so, will have been out of service for three years.

Studies are complete and a contract for a six-to-nine-month stabilization project may be awarded as early as this month, said District Engineer Walter Lyons of the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

Unstable soil in the area has been a problem since the four-lane highway was constructed in the 1960s to reroute highway traffic from Warrenton Road.

When the stretch of southbound highway was last sloughed and closed in early 2004, the state said no repairs would be made until the problem could be thoroughly studied and lasting repairs could be made.

Warren County Board of Supervisors President Carl Flanders, in whose District 4 the section lies, asked Lyons for a status report on the project.

&#8220These studies have been completed and plans have been developed for a project that will use a system of tie-back anchors to stabilize the existing embankment,” Lyons said in a letter responding to Flanders’ request.

&#8220These anchors are basically cables that will be placed inside casings drilled through the failing soils and founded in an underlying solid material. These anchors will be in a series of rows parallel to the roadway down the embankment slope. Pressure to stabilize the soil will be applied to the cables and maintained by anchor plates embedded in concrete blocks at the surface of the soil.”

The anchors &#8220may go a couple of hundred feet” deep into the soil, Lyons wrote.

Once that project is complete &#8220it is very likely that the southbound lanes can be made temporarily usable once the initial project is completed,” Lyons wrote.

Further stabilization using additional anchors may be required &#8220but this work will require acquisition of additional right-of-way, a process that can take a lengthy time. These additional anchors and complete restoration of the roadway and pavement will be undertaken once the right-of-way is acquired,” Lyons wrote.

No cost estimate for the work was in the letter.