After several hours of discussion concerning the city’s infrastructure Friday, members of the Laurel City Council’s Public Works and Public Safety Committees agreed to recommend to the entire Laurel City Council that the administration be given approval to pursue funding options for the city to do water and sewer improvements.

For the past several months, council members and city officials have been talking about the condition of the city’s water and sewer lines.

In a joint committee meeting at Laurel City Hall Friday, city officials met with engineers with Neel-Schaffer to determine the status of the city’s current infrastructure.

Council president George Carmichael, chairman of the council’s public works committee, and Councilman Manuel Jones, chairman of the council’s public safety committee, presided over the lengthy meeting which discussed the city’s problems.

“There has come a time that we need to step out and fix the problem,” Jones said. “Our streets are in bad shape, but we can’t fix the streets without fixing what’s under them.”

Officials said the city is currently handling maintenance projects, where they are repairing leaks when problems occur and replacing a small diameter of the damaged pipe when possible.

Also under the current maintenance plan, officials said where possible, the service connections are being switched from small-diameter mains to larger-diameter mains.

Randy Meador, an engineer with Neel-Schaffer, said the city’s proactive approach to the problems would be to take action on a five-year and a 10-year plan.

Meador said the city’s five-year plan for water distribution would consider projects that improve areas currently deficient by Mississippi State Department of Health standards, consider projects that improve fire flows to hydrants currently classified as low Class B or Class C Hydrants by the National Fire Protection Association Standards and develop a continuing maintenance plan.

He said the 6-10 year plan would have projects that improve areas that currently meet MSDH standards, projects that create redundancy within the system and projects that support residential and industrial growth.

Meador said the city’s five-year plan for sewer collection should pursue projects that eliminate sanitary sewer overflows, pursue projects that address known inflow and infiltration, consider inflow and infiltration study and update continuing maintenance plan.

He said the 6-10 year plan will include projects identified by an inflow and infiltration study and projects that replace aged pipe.

“Inflow and infiltration is a common problem found in most municipalities,” Meador said. “Common sources of inflow and infiltration include aged pipe and private service lines. ... Sanitary sewer overflows are a direct result of inflow and infiltration.”

According to officials, capital improvement projects are needed to improve the low pressure areas of the city, improve fire flow, create redundancy within the system and provide for residential and economic growth.

Officials projected that the most critical of the city’s water problems would cost about $2.1 million and the most critical of the city’s sewer problems would cost about $5 million.