The sewer collapse that necessitated the closure of several roads in Petal’s Chappell Hill area last week has been fixed and the roads re-opened.
Mayor Tony Ducker said some issues with a manhole still remain, but officials hope to have that fixed within the next week.
“It’s safe to travel right now, but we do want to set it up to where it will be good to go for a long period of time, once we put the structural lining in,” he said. “We’ll get that put in, and then at some point, once enough traffic has ridden over that area, we will come in and patch that area of road.
“We’re very fortunate there wasn’t more damage underneath the road, and then obviously that there were no injuries or anything from that standpoint, with traffic going through there. So it is a situation that could have been a lot worse.”
Ducker said the collapse did not result in any loss of service to residents.
“From a sewer standpoint, we had to do some things with some lift stations, but no one ever lost service,” he said.
The collapse occurred in the early afternoon of March 1 and was caused mainly by old, outdated sewer lines.
“It’s just some older pipes, that for multiple reasons, failed us,” Ducker said. “There’s a section of pipe right there under a manhole that gave way.
“The question is always ‘where does the dirt go?’ It basically goes into the line and gets shot out of there, so it’s a little bit of an unusual situation.”
As of the afternoon of March 2, barricades had been placed at the intersection of the Evelyn Gandy Parkway and Old Richton Road, stopping traffic near Beverly Hills Food Mart. Other blockades had been placed along Chappell Hill Road at Greens Creek Baptist Church, as well as near the church’s cemetery.
“If you ride up to the top of Chappell Hill, our guys are kind of in the right-hand lane of Old Richton Road,” Ducker said that afternoon. “There’s a section close to Star Lane that is blocked off too.
“Folks can still get to Beverly Hills Grocery; they just have to go around. We’re trying to keep a safe distance so our folks can get the work done.”
Detours were placed throughout the area to divert motorists to a safe route.
Ducker said work will be conducted to help prevent a similar situation from happening in the future.
“We’ll do some work there, and then we’ll do some more stuff in the near future to make sure the manhole is in a good spot,” he said. “We just want to make sure it’s safe to travel through there.”
A cost for repairs has not yet been determined.
