FERRIDAY — For the last 21 years, the Ferriday water plant has been causing headaches, but Mayor Glen McGlothin said he hopes to leave his successors with a plant that doesn’t cause them the troubles he’s seen through the years.

“Our plans are strictly to build a new plant on property we already own, drill wells in the same aquifer Vidalia draws from and build a new green sand filter, which is the top of the line, newest thing in water treatment,” he said.

The goal, he said, is to build a plant that will last 40 years.

The new plant will cost $6.4 million, and McGlothin said the U.S. Department of Agriculture — the funding agency — is behind the plan and will even allow the town to use a $1.6 million grant that was initially intended to be used to repair the existing plant for the new construction.

The town will have to spend $500,000 of its own money, McGlothin said.

“I hate to have to do that, because that’s $500,000 we could have spent on recreation or streets or sewers,” he said.

But it’s going to take a while to get a new plant built, however, and that means working with the existing plant.

Already, the town is having all of the filters in the plant repaired to the tune of $89,000.

“We are spending money I hate to spend, but we have to have water plant for three more years,” McGlothin said.

The boil order the town has been under since May was placed because of a large hole tank at the plant, and in early September the town council accepted a bid for $476,00 from Camo Construction for a new one.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the aldermen will officially pass a resolution stating that Camo was awarded the bid, but McGlothin said because of the existing situation some formalities have been allowed to be waived and the work is already under way.

“It is ordered and is being built even as we speak,” McGlothin said.

Once the tank is fabricated, it will be taken to the site of the water plant and put together, and the work could be completed by the end of the year.

“We get a brand new tank, transfer everything to it and we are off the boil order,” McGlothin said.