Pascagoula sewage spill stopped; officials say pipe must be replaced

Jackson County Utility Authority officials said they repaired a leak that released about 550,000 gallons of untreated sewage into the Pascagoula River over the weekend, but the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality issued a water contact advisory Monday for parts of the river and Comynie Bayou.

Eric Page, the utility authority’s executive director, told Mississippi Today that recent rainfall put stress on the sewer system and caused a section of line installed roughly 50 years ago to rupture. Pascagoula officials alerted the utility about the leak Saturday night, and crews fixed it Sunday afternoon.

“Were 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 said, according to Mississippi Today. Page said “a number of residences” are near the break and that people use that stretch of the river for recreational boating.

The MDEQ advisory covers Comynie Bayou and the stretch of the Pascagoula River between the west end of Delmas Avenue south to the rivers mouth, the agency said. Page said the failed cast iron pipe is part of a four-mile line installed in the 1960s or 1970s that the utility plans to evaluate for replacement as part of its capital improvements plan over the next couple of years.

Page told Mississippi Today the replacement would likely cost “well in excess of $10 million.” He said the Jackson County Utility Authority was created by the Mississippi Legislature in 2006; before that the utility was part of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Regional Wastewater Authority, established in 1981, which inherited sewer infrastructure from local entities. Recent Coast wastewater concerns have included reports of untreated sewage from houseboats, the Roy Howard Community Journalism Center reported; MDEQ said testing showed no signs of contamination, while the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources called it a “huge issue.” The MDEQ website shows the agency has issued 97 advisories since 2024 under its Mississippi Beach Monitoring Program for probable high bacteria levels.

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