By Billy Davis

The Miss. Department of Environmental Quality issued a temporary advisory over the weekend after learning that a sewer pipe near Panola Avenue was sending sewage into the Tallahatchie River.

The City of Batesville advised the state agency immediately after discovering the problem, said David Karr, the city’s waste water plant superintendent.

City workers concreted a so-called bypass pipe to close it off from further use and applied disinfectant to the sewer lines.

Karr and other city workers discovered the problem last Friday after responding to a complaint by a Panola Avenue homeowner who reported a sewer leak. The leak was never found on the homeowner’s property, but a city worker discovered the raw sewage when he lifted a manhole cover located across the road.  

After discovering the flow of raw sewage, a search then began for the source of the problem. After city workers backtracked through a patch of woods to trace the pipe, a backhoe uncovered an old manhole located east of Panola Avenue that had been buried years ago under dirt and brush, Karr said.

Construction of the road years ago may have buried the manhole when the road bed was raised, he said.

“It’s made with bricks, so it’s got to be 50 years old at least,” Karr said. “Whoever knew it was there is either in a nursing home or long since gone.”

Karr said manholes were once constructed of bricks, and the one found by city workers also included a “bypass pipe,” which is no longer allowed per environmental regulations. The old bypass pipe, used for overflow, caused the problem when a clogged pipe dispensed the sewage into the bypass pipe beneath the road and toward the river. The sewer pipe would normally send the waste toward the nearby wastewater treatment plant.

Karr half-joked that finding the sewerage problem was embarrassing after the City of Batesville earned a state award last week for operation of its sewage treatment plant.

“It’s definitely bad timing,” Karr said.

The MDEQ advisory recommended that people avoid “water contact recreation,” meaning swimming and wading, until test results of the water are concluded.

“We understand that the City of Batesville is actively working on the problem,” said a spokesman with the agency. “The advisory is simply a caution.”