A sewer main buried more than 20 feet under North Texoma Parkway has collapsed in several places, and Sherman wants to replace it under an emergency contract worth $410,000.
The City Council will consider the repair as a consent item at its Nov. 16 meeting, according to the agenda posted Monday. The work would go to Hayes Construction, a Sherman company, and be paid from the city's 2026-27 Utility Improvement Fund.
What failed
The 14-inch line runs along the east side of North Texoma Parkway toward North Sam Rayburn Freeway. A staff report says hydrogen sulfide, the gas that builds up in sewers, has eroded the ductile iron pipe and caused multiple collapses between the south side of East Sycamore Street and the southern edge of the property at 1521 N. Texoma Parkway.
City crews reported seven sanitary sewer overflows to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality from the manhole upstream of the damage between Sept. 7 and Oct. 22, when an emergency bypass pump was installed, the report says.
A requisition signed Oct. 12 by Public Works Director Eric Sandberg described a manhole in the 1500 block of Texoma Parkway that was actively overflowing onto the surrounding area and called it a public health emergency.
How it would be fixed
Because the main is so deep, staff say digging it up would be extremely difficult. Instead, the contractor would use pipe bursting, a trenchless method that breaks apart the old pipe while pulling a new one into its place. The replacement would be high-density polyethylene, which the report says stands up to hydrogen sulfide.
