By Betsy Finklea
The City of Dillon has “major, major problems” with what was referred to as the Perdue sewer line in the Deerwood Avenue area, according to Mayor Todd Davis at Monday night’s meeting.
At least four sinkholes have been appearing along the line causing major problems. The first sinkhole appeared on the side of the road.
The incident shut down operations at Perdue for a short time. Progress Energy had to come brace the main power line that was near a sinkhole.
Mike Hanna of Hanna Engineering appeared at the meeting and showed a series of slides showing the problem and how they need to address it.
Hanna said paper thin pipe was pulled from the sinkhole area. They are currently bypassing the pipe with rented pumps.
Hanna said massive work is ahead for at least another solid week.  Double crews have been working on the problem. Pipe had to be ordered from Tennessee and Ohio.
Three phases of work are planned to address what Hanna called a series of problems including the corrosive nature of the sewer  coming from Perdue and the long detention in the line where air comes in contact with the sewer causing a byproduct of sulfuric acid.
Hanna estimates the cost to complete all three phases of repair at approximately $600,000. He said phase one addresses the emergency and the other two phases, which would be bid out, would address future concerns.
He said the problem existed before the recent rains, but the rain made it show itself.
He also said the city needed to spend some money on infiltration and inflow.
The city has $1.4 million in a Perdue depreciation account and $2 million in an unrestricted account so either fund could be used to address the problem.