The Board of Mayor and Aldermen are re-advertising for bids for the city’s auxiliary waterline project.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said the city expects to re-advertise the project by mid-March to take advantage of an extra $3 million in federal money allocated for the project.

“We had to make a request to the (U.S. Army) Corps of Engineers for the money,” Flaggs said. “We have to have it first.”

Congress in December approved an additional $3 million for the project to install a second emergency waterline for the city as a backup to the main waterline.

The project has been estimated to cost $5 million, but its exact cost will not be known until the bids are opened. It was initially funded by a $2.45 million Corps 592 grant with the city paying 25 percent of the project cost. The additional money boosts the federal funding to $5.45 million.

The board in October approved advertising for bids for phase one of the project, which was to connect part of the line to the water treatment plant on Haining Road. It cancelled the plan after receiving news of the extra money.

When the board learned about the extra money Flaggs said the increased funding meant the city would be able to cover building the entire project at one time instead of building it in phases.

“We had under contract about $2-something million to do only half of it, because we decided that we didn’t want to let a contract out without having money in the bank,” he said. “Now, because of the appropriation, we’re going to stop the bids and we’re going to redo the bids so we can do the full waterline project.”

Under the proposed plans for the project, the backup waterline will go south on North Washington Street and connect to an existing 30-inch line on Jackson Street. The project took on a sense of urgency after a valve broke on the city’s main waterline in May 2017, forcing city officials to shut the line down for four days and issue a boil water notice.

Discussion of an auxiliary waterline began in 2010 after a landslide at the construction site of the Corps’ Jesse Brent Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Center on Washington Street threatened the city’s main waterline.