A Katrina-inspired effort to clear debris from drainage bayous inside Vicksburg has shrunk from several miles to 140 feet of dry chutes in Kings, though work is expected to pick up soon to restore the flow of various consultant fees from the state.

Rocks were placed along a 1,000-foot stretch of open ditch at Hutson Street and Round Alley in December 2009 to see how the conventional anti-erosion method worked ­— instead of physically clearing them — before possibly doing the same on Glass, Hatcher and Stouts bayous farther south. The rocks appear to be doing the job.

The Kings test site is the only place where any work is visible. Bidding out the rest has hinged on property owners donating access to their land.

“We just can’t get all the owners to sign,” District 2 Supervisor William Banks said.

In 2008, supervisors were awarded $3.9 million in Katrina-related disaster grant money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development after a general outline of the project was submitted. Funds were awarded as part of a $5.48 billion recovery package to Mississippi from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development via the Mississippi Development Authority. Eligible counties included 49 declared federal disaster areas following Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Engineering and surveying fees paid from the grant funds this year have totaled $180,466.05. An additional $47,956.24 in administration fees have been paid.

Those totals won’t move until construction begins, as MDA has halted reimbursements to all consultants on the project, officials said this week.

“We’ll clear out the vegetation and the trees,” said Brian Robbins of ABMB Engineers, the county’s engineering firm and engineer on the bayou-clearing job, pointing out an area across Hutson from the test site filled mostly with thick tree roots, one tree across the canal and littered with a few wrappers and other rubbish along the banks. The firm is expected to ask supervisors to authorize advertising work to clear two portions of ditch near Hutson, one 125 feet and another about 15 feet.

The effort to gain about 12 easements across parts of Kings and near a bridge at Spouts Spring Road has been tied up searching for multiple heirs to those properties, delaying the entire process on the three longer bayous. No money for land acquisition was included in the grant, which calls for the county to maintain the areas inside the work zones perpetually — a deal-breaker for Karen Magruder, who owns land near the bridge.

“What they’re doing is wonderful, with all the sludge and everything that’s accumulated,” Magruder said. “The permanent easement is the challenge.”

Magruder, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, asked to be paid for her troubles in exchange for the access despite the grant’s parameters when approached last summer by Jimmy G. Gouras Urban Planning Consultants, administrator of the grant funds.

“To me, it implies I no longer have control of the property,” Magruder said.

Supervisors have ruled out purchasing land with county funds or the eminent domain process to speed up work. District 3 Supervisor Charles Selmon, the effort’s biggest champion prior to and after it became the lead item on the county’s disaster grant application, has said he’d personally seek permission for the eventual contractor to enter private property and, on Monday, told supervisors they merely had to press for tighter deadlines from the consultants.

Vicksburg and Warren County were awarded more than $5.2 million for the bayou work and for a new fire station at Vicksburg Municipal Airport. A $320,000 slice of the city’s cut also financed a 10-bay hangar at the facility, which opened in July.