While the Jackson County Utility Authority was able to quickly repair a leak that dumped approximately 550,000 gallons of untreated sewage into the Pascagoula River this past weekend, officials say the issue is part of a larger infrastructure need decades in the making.
The leak has led the state to issue a water contact advisory on Monday.
Eric Page, the authority’s executive director, said recent rainfall put stress on the sewer system, causing a section of a line installed roughly 50 years ago to rupture. Pascagoula officials alerted the utility about the leak on Saturday night and it was able to fix the leak Sunday afternoon, Page said.
“ We’re thinking that the pressure over time, the stress that was on the pipe from that rain event, then the amount of sewage that it was having to pump because of the stormwater infiltration into the sewer system, it just ultimately collapsed,” Page told Mississippi Today.
The Mississippi Department of Enviornmental Quality issued the water contact advisory for Comynie Bayou and the stretch of the Pascagoula River between the west end of Delmas Avenue south to the river’s mouth. “A number of residences” are near where the line break happened, Page said, adding that people use that stretch of the river for recreational boating.
A map from MDEQ showing where the water contact advisory applies to.While workers were able to fix the leak within a day, the utility director said the cast iron pipe that failed is part of a four-mile line installed in either the 1960s or 1970s that needs replacing.
“ We’re evaluating as part of our capital improvements plan strategy how to replace that pipe sometime over the next couple of years,” Page said. “The cost for that replacement project would end up being probably well in excess of $10 million. So that’s not something you can just do on a whim.”
The Mississippi Legislature created the Jackson County Utility Authority in 2006. Before then, the utility was part of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Regional Wastewater Authority, which was established in 1981. The regional authority inherited the sewer infrastructure from local entities, Page said.
Last weekend’s sewer leak is just the latest wastewater issue on the Coast. State officials in recent years have raised the alarm on untreated sewage from houseboats pouring directly into the Pascagoula River, the Roy Howard Community Journalism Center reported last year. While MDEQ said water testing showed no signs of contamination, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources called it a “huge issue.”
Mississippi beaches have also struggled for years with water contact advisories due to high bacteria levels. While those are usually the result of “natural reasons” such as “high winds and significant rainfall,” they also can occur after a sewer line break, MDEQ’s website says. Just since 2024, the agency has issued 97 advisories due to “probable high bacteria levels” as part of its Mississippi Beach Monitoring Program.
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