City crews repair a water main break along Third Street SE, one of two that occurred early Thursday morning. Residents, businesses and traffic were affected for approximately three and a half hours while crews fixed the line.--NEWS PHOTO BRENDAN MILLER
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City field operation crews quickly responded to two separate water main breaks Thursday morning in the Flats that temporarily affected residents and businesses in the area.
Early in the morning, crews responded to a water main break on Third Street SE outside IGA Foodland and were able to complete repairs before noon, taking approximately three and a half hours.
The other break occurred near the intersection of Ninth Street and Eighth Avenue SE and took crews more than seven hours to fix. Traffic was also detoured in both locations during repairs.
“Our teams were immediately on it (Thursday) morning,” said James King, acting manager, city field operations. “We have a very well diverse crew here under field op so we’re able to attend these, get the valve shut off, notify residents, customers if they were affected and deal with our regulatory responsibilities, and then, obviously, facilitate the repairs.”
King explains crews need to access and turn off values the city uses to control water distribution throughout the community. Crews are restricted to what valves need to be shut off for repairs, depending on where the break occurs along the line.
He says he is not sure how many people were affected throughout Thursday’s repairs but says the goal is to “always minimize the affected area.”
“Depending on the severity of the repair, we always have to maintain positive pressure for safety. So we would minimize the valving, depending on what happened,” explains King. “If we actually cut a section out of it, clearly it has to be shut down as much as possible.”
Despite recent freezing temperatures, King explains there could be several reasons that cause two mains to break in the same section of the city.
“It’s hard to say, sometimes it just could be older infrastructure that needs to be repaired and it finally gave way, sometimes there’s a little bit of ground adjustment with the temperature change, so it’s not exactly pinpointed.”
However, King pointed out that in the past city crews have typically dealt with water main breaks during the holidays.
“As funny as it is, it usually happens at Christmas,” King chuckles. “It can happen, I mean it’s not exactly normal, but it can happen.”
King says if residents or commercial customers notice anything abnormal this winter they are encouraged to contact the city’s environment utilities department.
“If they see something out of the norm, that’s super beneficial on our end to be able to investigate it before something major happens.”
