The city of Vicksburg is buying an abandoned church.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday approved buying a piece of property off Patricia Street containing the church, which is threatened by erosion from Spouts Bayou, which runs along the property. The selling price will be based on an appraisal of the property.

“The church is compromised by the bayou, so we’ve either got to fix it or we’ve got to buy it,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said. “We chose to buy it because it costs more to repair the washout than to buy the church (property).

“The water is about to take the church into the bayou, and rather than us take the responsibility (to fix it) it is cheaper to buy the church and demolish it later than fix the bayou.”

Public works director Garnet Van Norman said erosion along the bayou’s bank has been sloughing it away and threatening the church. He said the city several years ago used a National Resource Conservation grant to fix the problem, which has returned and threatens to undercut the church.

He added construction crews cannot access the problem from Patricia Street.

North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield, who is over public works, said the only way to correct the problem is to fix the erosion problem along the length of the bayou, because a section of it is narrow and backs up during heavy rains.

“You can’t just fix that one spot,” he said. “You have to go the entire length of the bayou and fix it.”

He said the board has considered an NRCS project to do that, and the project’s cost was estimated at between $400,000 and $800,000 to do the entire project.

“And you just can’t do one side of the road; you have to both sides — I’m talking about the roads on either side of that bayou,” Mayfield. “That would entail getting easements from 12 to 15 property owners.

“We definitely took the lesser way out, money-wise.”