The city reached another step in cleaning up the old Natchez Pecan Factory site Monday — filing the cistern on the property with dirt.

The cistern probably originally served a house located on the land before the pecan factory replaced it, local geologist John Bornman said Monday.

Filling in the cistern would have little or no affect on the stability of the bluffs, Bornman said.

“The damage is already done,” he said. “I think the damage has been going on for 100 years.”

Water from the cistern had a chance to seep into the surrounding loess soil, loosening it and destabilizing it, he said.

The cistern was covered with a piece of metal before the factory was torn down in February. During the demolition, the cover disappeared and the hole to the cistern got bigger, Natchez resident Jim Sanders said at an alderman meeting last month.

At the meeting, he expressed concern about the dangers the open, water-filled cistern might pose.

Sanders said Monday he was glad the cistern was being filled in.

“You have an open cistern, and an animal or child or adult could wander off and fall in,” Sanders said Monday. “that concerned me very much. If they’re starting to fill it in, that’s a good thing. I hope it will make it safer.”

Mayor Phillip West, too, said he hopes the step will make the area safer.

“Any kind of open cistern poses a danger to the community,” West said. “You’ve got to have it really compacted with dirt to eliminate the possibilities.”

A state-approved archeologist is overseeing the debris removal and the filling of the cistern, West said, as is required by an agreement with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Ken P’Pool, director of the historic preservation division of MDAH, said filling a cistern was a good archaeological step to take.

“Because cisterns are such important archaeological resources, they’re normally excavated in a very scientific way,” P’Pool said Monday. “It’s best to fill it in until you have a chance to conduct an excavation. It’s a good way to protect its contents, and it helps to prevent the walls of the cistern from falling in.”

City Engineer David Gardner said it was important to fill in gaps like the cistern because of stability issues.

Cisterns, usually 20 or 25 feet deep, were used years ago to collect rainwater, Gardner said.

“You want to fill that void up,” Gardner said. “Anytime you can keep water from penetrating the ground, you’re better off as a whole. You want your water to always shed away from the bluffs. It’s always best to go ahead and fill those cisterns so as to take away an avenue for water to penetrate the ground.”