Raw sewage will soon flow into a permanent pre-treatment system at Ceres Research and Industrial Complex.

Monday, the Warren County Board of Supervisors authorized a contract with Hemphill Construction and the Warren County Port Commission to construct a permanent pre-treatment system to replace the temporary one being used by MS TanTec Leather Company.

“They have chromium as a byproduct of that leather and it has to be pre-treated,” Port Commission chairman Johnny Moss said. “It’s just a requirement that it has to be pre-treated.

“We knew that they were going to do that when they came,” Moss said.

In December, the board approved a contract to build a temporary pre-treatment system for TanTec.

Florence-based Hemphill Construction was the lone bidder to build the temporary system and will begin construction on the permanent system soon.

Construction of the permanent system will take about six to eight months, Moss said.

A grant from the state geared to industrial expansion and development is funding the treatment system at the plant. However, the Port Commission will have to make up the difference of $12,000 out of its own funds.

ISA TanTec, which tans and packs raw leather at plants in China and Vietnam, sells leather to shoe makers including Timberland, Wolverine, Deckers, Clarks, Merrell, Sperry, Rockport and New Balance, among other apparel makers.

The facility plans to employ 366 people in five years at the 140,000 square-foot former Calsonic building at Ceres.

The board also approved a contract with Maintenance Systems Inc. for maintenance of the pre-treatment system as well as the sewage lagoon.

“That contract has not yet been awarded, but if everything is in order it will save money,” Moss said. “The contract MSI has quoted is less than what ST Environmental Services is currently charging.”

ST Environmental Services has maintained the sewage lagoon for 30 years.

The board also approved a 60-day extension of the contract with WATCO Transloading LLC to operate the Warren County Port.

Moss said the port’s contract with Kinder Morgan expired Dec. 31 but was extended to June 30. After that, the lease was extended on a month-to-month basis.

Under the contract extension, he said the company pays the port a lease based on tonnage handled by the port. He said port officials are in negotiations with WATCO representatives to have a contract in place soon.

In April, Pittsburg, Kan.-based WATCO which owns the short line railroad serving the Port of Vicksburg, took over port operations from Kinder Morgan.

“I think this will be a better situation for us,” port director Wayne Mansfield said after the April meeting. “Kinder is such a large operation, they tend to move slow, not in terms of their service, but just in terms of decisions. WATCO seems to be a little bit quicker. We get a lot of requests for one-time shipments and WATCO’s situated a lot better to handle those types of requests.”