LaGrange city crews will be working on a sewage line along Vernon Street across from First United Methodist Church after state Department of Transportation crews filled the line with concrete.

LaGrange Public Works Director David Brown said someone reported a small sinkhole in the road at the corner of Vernon and Alford streets two weeks ago and a DOT crew with a trailer of concrete and a mixer came and filled the hole. Saturday morning, a sewage smell was reported in the small creek behind Big Chick at 503 Vernon St.

A city crew discovered there was an old sewage tap in the road and the DOT workers had filled ‘several hundred feet’ of sewage main with concrete. The main will have to be dug up and replaced, and Brown does not know how long the work will take or how much it will cost, or whether DOT will pay for it.

“We had to report the sewage spill to (the state Environmental Protection Division) and we said this was caused by the DOT,” Brown said.

Brown has not seen anything like this in his 27 years of public works, he said. Most of the work on the line will be done at night so as not to disrupt traffic.