During an emergency meeting on Dec. 30, 2024, Fairhope City Council approved a $700,000 resolution to repair major damages to Section Street after heavy storms over that weekend.

Public Works Director Richard Johnson said plastic piping located 20 feet beneath Section Street suffered major drainage failure, causing the sidewalk to fall away. He said about around 4-5 inches of rain over a short period of time overwhelmed the drainage system.

"Turns out there's double HDPE, which is a plastic pipe at a pretty good depth, about 20 feet that were suffering joint failures well before this event, but this event put it over the top," Johnson said. "We just had a complete catastrophic failure to the point that the pipes have collapsed at the upstream side of that crossing, so a fix is required."

Due to the damages and the repairs that are needed, a portion of Section Street has been blocked off by the city, forcing drivers to use Bayou Drive as a detour for entering the city. Repairs were expected to take around 15 days to complete.

McElhenney Construction was awarded a bid for $683,521.36 to repair the sidewalk and curbing. The city will also pay Sawgrass Consulting $71,000 for engineering services.

New pipes made of concrete will replace the plastic piping that was damaged, while existing pipes will be reinforced to be sustainable for the future.

"To make sure that we're not revisiting this anytime too soon is they will go in and do a cured in-place fiberglass lining of that plastic pipe that'll give us that 50-year, 75-year performance just like a concrete, and then everything that's being replaced will be concrete, and hopefully, the council that's sitting here in 100 years won't be dealing with this problem," Johnson said.