STARKVILLE — Two creeks on the northwest side of town are under a water contact advisory for an indefinite amount of time after a hole in a pipe caused a sewage spill.
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality issued the advisory Friday morning for Trim Cane Creek from its confluence with Sun Creek to where it joins Josey Creek and down to where Josey Creek meets Highway 82. MDEQ expanded the advisory Friday afternoon to “an unnamed tributary, then to the mouth of Josey Creek,” near Highway 25 and Reed Road.
“MDEQ recommends that people avoid water contact such as swimming, wading, and fishing,” the advisory states. “People should also avoid eating fish or anything else taken from these waters until further notice.”
The pipe that broke was a temporary installment for the sewage to bypass the Trim Cane Creek lift station while Starkville Utilities repaired it, general manager Terry Kemp said. There are 14 lift stations strategically placed throughout Starkville, with the purpose of moving wastewater from lower to higher elevation in order to transport it to the city’s wastewater plant.
The pipe connected the lift station to a small lagoon-like holding area that is usually close to empty but contained wastewater while the lift station was under repair. The repair work finished Tuesday, and Starkville Utilities workers had started removing the pipe when they found the hole on Thursday, Kemp said.
“We quickly valved off (the break) and converted it back to normal operating procedure, which is what we would be doing this week anyway,” he said.
Starkville Utilities reported the incident to MDEQ, as is required, on Thursday and finished repairing the hole and cleaning the surrounding area Friday afternoon.
The advisory is above all a precautionary measure with “very conservative boundaries,” created by using topographic maps to determine where the spill might spread to, Kemp said.
Water contact advisories vary in duration and cannot be predicted, but MDEQ will continually test the water until it is deemed safe for contact. This might take some time because there is very little flow in the two creeks due to a recent lack of rain and runoff, Kemp said.
“You’re not looking for a major active stream,” he said. “In a lot of cases, what you’re looking for is dilution.”
The area under advisory is minimally populated, and Oktibbeha County Supervisors Orlando Trainer and Marvell Howard said they are not aware of any direct impact on people in Districts 2 and 3, respectively. The portion of Trim Cane Creek between Sun Creek and Jackson Street is part of the border between the two districts.
There are currently nine active water contact advisories in Mississippi, and the earliest one is from April, according to the MDEQ website. The duration of an advisory does not depend only on the size of a sewage spill, MDEQ Communications Director Robbie Wilbur said.
“They are dependent on many conditions, such as duration and volume of a release, the time to repair a sewer system, weather conditions, land use in the surrounding area, and physical characteristics of the waterbody,” Wilbur said.
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