VIDALIA — Concordia Parish officials said they hope to see the final groundwork laid to complete long-anticipated projects in 2012.

With the construction of the new Vidalia municipal and recreational complexes under way, that leaves one long-term project to complete, Vidalia Mayor Hyram Copeland said.

“Our big project is that we are working toward getting funding for the port, to work with our state and congressional delegation to acquire funding for the port.” Copeland said.

In addition to pursuing port development, Copeland said the city would be doing a street overlay project in the area of Riverside Drive and Concordia Avenue during the year.

“We have a few streets over on the Riverside area that we want to complete, and that will just about wrap us up as far as overlay projects are concerned in Vidalia,” he said.

In Ferriday, Mayor Glen McGlothin said the No. 1 priority would be to get everything in order to build a new water treatment facility.

Town officials should sign papers with the third party management firm for the new plant later this month, he said.

Third-party management is one of the requirements the U.S. Department of Agriculture has placed on the town before the plant can be built.

“Everybody thought we would have it done by now, but I have always told them it is a long process,” McGlothin said. “We have had a bad plant for 20 years, do you want to rush it and have another bad one?”

The town will also go to the bond commission and ask to have a street millage extended so the town can complete needed street repairs. The bond will go before voters in April.

“We have 14 streets we will have to fix that have gotten in a bad way in the last 20 years,” McGlothin said. “We have got to extend the millage we have by 10-12 years so we can fix some of these streets before they completely deteriorate.”

In the parish, the Police Jury will continue to pursue drainage solutions, Police Jury President Melvin Ferrington said.

Jurors have had several meetings with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and other emergency preparedness agencies about the issue recently.

“(Parish engineers) are in the process of doing a preliminary study and getting back with FEMA and letting them know what we basically want to do and which way we want to run the water,” Ferrington said.

“We have been working on that for along time. I have been here for 19-plus years, and ever since I got my feet on the ground, I have been working on the drainage in the parish. Hopefully in 2012 we will have a drainage program going — or at least have a study — so we will know exactly which way to go and what it is going to cost us.”