A Mississippi Store Has Been Closed for a Month Due to Flooding. No One Knows Where the Water is Coming From or How to Stop It

Employees, experts, and a local alderman are puzzled by a nonstop leak inside an Advanced Auto Parts store in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

The leak started last month and has left a layer of water covering the store's ground and parking lot.

The store hired a plumber to check for leaks but did not find any, so the city's water department was alerted to it on Sept. 24, according to WLOX.

"Our water department went out there, they turned off the water for 24 hours to see if water would subside, but it kept flowing," said Ward Two Alderman Rickey Authement.

Some guess the leak was caused by a spring that burst underground, but Authement, a professional home and building inspector, denied that theory.

"Every once in a while, I'll run into a spring, including at my house, but it's minor. It just keeps the ground wet at that spot. But it's not like the way the water is flowing from the concrete at the auto part store," he told WLOX. "I'm not sure if it's a spring or a waterline from the building that we don't know that there's another tap that's feeding it."

The alderman said Advance Auto Parts' corporate office has made no further efforts to plug the leak.

"It seems like they would do something different than just putting a sign on the floor," he said. "They should at least make a public statement."

The corporate office did not respond to WLOX's calls.