NATCHEZ — Adams County supervisors retroactively rejected a bid for the next phase of a levee project at the Belwood industrial site, citing poor work on a previous project and pending litigation.

On Jan. 8, the supervisors approved Camo Construction’s $625,000 bid for the construction of approximately 1,000 feet of levee along the industrial site at the former Belwood Country Club near the Natchez-Adams County Port.

Following the acceptance of the bid, the supervisors and Camo Construction — a Vidalia-based company that has been operating around the Miss-Lou for approximately 20 years — signed a contract for the work.

On Monday, however, the supervisors voted to reject that bid and advertise again for a construction company to complete the work.

The reason for retroactively declining the bid, board attorney Scott Slover said, was primarily because of another county construction project with Camo Construction — a more than $200,000 emergency watershed project on Martin Luther King Jr. Road.

Camo Construction was hired to repair a 30- to 40-foot slide, which appeared on Martin Luther King Jr. Road more than two years ago, but just months after the repair was complete, Slover said, the erosion reappeared.

Slover said the county engineer and the road department determined the reoccurrence of the erosion to be the fault of the construction company.

At the meeting, however, Camo Construction President Mike Grantham said the erosion reoccurred because asphalt had not been immediately applied to the portion of the road the company had been hired to fix.

Though laying asphalt on the completed roadway was originally part of the contracted work on Martin Luther King Jr. Road, Grantham said the county removed that part of the contract and opted to lay the asphalt themselves.

“I don’t have a problem standing behind my warranty,” Grantham said. “We did 100 percent of the work we were asked to do.”

County Engineer Jim Marlow said the asphalt being laid later than the original roadwork on Martin Luther King Jr. Road would not have induced the reoccurrence of the erosion.

Slover said another reason the county rejected the bid was because of pending litigation concerning the Martin Luther King Jr. Road project.

Slover said working with a contractor with whom the county has possible pending litigation could create a tough situation, such as if the county needed to contact the contractor but had to go through an attorney to do so.

Grantham said he did not believe retroactively rejecting the bid for the construction negated the signed and awarded contract with the county, but Slover said whether the contract with Camo Construction is enforceable is “arguable.”

Slover said the board of supervisors would begin advertising for new requests for proposals for the Belwood levee project soon.