Malcolm Dykes: The Woes of Yazoo Clay

When it comes to road and building foundations there is no worse soil to refer to than the notorious Yazoo Clay.

Named after a bluff along the Yazoo River at Yazoo City MS, it has long been a developer's worst nightmare stretching westward from Louisiana over into our Magnolia State and on over into Alabama in various locations.

The reason being is its geologic composition is most unstable.

It contains a type of clay known as montmorillonite, making it a poor foundation material due to the fact that moisture causes extreme changes in volume.

Sand, pyrite, and marl have all been noted in the formation.

And here's the interesting part of this nemesis, it preserves fossils from way on back, including the prehistoric cetaceans Basilosaurus and Zygorhiza, and the marine snake Pterosphenus.

Sharks, rays, eels, and fish have also been found in the formation.

Biologists and archeologists get all excited about that.

But that historical fact does little in providing solace to the unfortunate ones trying to maintain our state highways like MDOT and all the road builders like my late brother-in-law Tommy Wallace of T. L. Wallace Construction.

Especially the highways in the Jackson metro area and around.

Road construction there is a never-ending ordeal and like myself most of you reading this know the bump-bump ride you are going to get when visiting our capital city.

Homeowners don't fare much better.

A longtime church friend, Gary Jones, once owned a home near Brandon and I was his guest for nearly 5 months before he and I deployed to Iraq to support our military in 2007.

This is not an exaggeration, when you walked into his front door, you started walking downhill, literally.

Yazoo clay was forever unsettling his home and eventually, he had to sell it and move because it was made uninhabited with the roof coming apart and the floor as well.

It literally took him out of his home.

The woes of Yazoo clay.

My nephew the Rev. Jerry Dillon, when building their beautiful spacious upscale new sanctuary in Madison of Parkway Pentecostal Church, had to deal with this nemesis spending untold amounts of money going deep into the earth to establish a firm foundation.

It cracks the thickest of concrete pours and asphalt roadways, literally lifting roadbeds up several inches from the original setting and shifting structures around.

If you are a victim of Yazoo clay, my heart goes out to you.

There's not a lot you can do or hope for in trying to establish a dwelling place on the top of it.

Maybe good fortune will come your way and you find one of those prehistoric Basilosaurus fossils embedded!

Just trying to give you a little cheer here in your woes of Yazoo clay.

God bless you and God bless America.