JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - The Jackson City Council has voted to hire Trilogy Engineering Services to conduct a water study required by the state.
The Clarion-Ledger reports (https://on.thec-l.com/1MUt07V) the Mississippi State Health Department has required Jackson to conduct a corrosion control optimization study, which should help the city identify ways to maintain a stable pH. This is in response to the discovery of high levels of lead in some homes across the city in June and again in January and February.
Councilmen voted 3-2 Tuesday in favor of the Trilogy contract. The council also voted unanimously to approve an application for MSDH’s emergency loan through the drinking water system emergency loan fund.
The loan would supply $500,000 to the city, $300,000 of which would be spent on the Trilogy corrosion control contract. The rest, Jackson Public Works Director Kishia Powell said, will help “to make interim improvements we need to make.”
She said she hopes the improvements will be made within the next month, so that the next sample set taken in July will reflect those changes.
When city administrators brought the Trilogy contract before the city council initially, councilmen expressed dismay at the $400,000 proposal, which was chosen without a request for proposal or another bidding process.
“We’ve very clearly expressed valid concerns, but I think we have a compromise that allows us to move forward. I think I will be voting for this item at this time,” Councilman Melvin Priester said in Tuesday’s meeting.
Priester said he is still concerned by the fact that the “contractor here wrote their own scope of work and no other firms were contacted for quotes according to a meeting I had this week with one of the subcontractors on this project.”
“Nevertheless, if the price is more in alignment with what the data I asked for the state to provide, that’s where we’ll go,” Priester wrote on Facebook on April 3.
In March, The Clarion-Ledger reported that the city had already identified a solution to the corrosion issue at the plant.
Two days before the council’s decision to hire Trilogy, Priester wrote: “The City identified a key upgrade to our corrosion control system at the newer water plant years before this lead situation reached its current state. In fact, we asked for and were approved by the state/EPA to receive a loan to do this work.”
When asked why the city had not taken the opportunity sooner, Yarber spokeswoman Shelia Byrd would only respond: “The city has a corrosion control treatment program.”
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Information from: The Clarion-Ledger, https://www.clarionledger.com
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