COLUMBUS, Miss-- The Lowndes County Supervisors voted unanimously to move forward with accepting the bid of a new Health Department building after talks for years.

The new 2.2 million dollar facility will be constructed by local contractor Burks Mordecai, which submitted the lowest bid. They expect to break ground on the project this month and have the new health department completed by July or August of 2010.

According to Joey Henderson of JBHM Architects, "The existing building is an older building.  It has been added on to several times.  They have a lot of issues from AVA issues to control issues.  We have been working on this for three to four years now."

The new facility will be constructed on Lehmberg Road.