Water department not gushing with answers about pipe problems
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Water and Wastewater director Carl Davis said Thursday after two 12-inch water mains broke Nov. 10 and into the early morning hours of Nov. 11, causing severe reductions in water pressure and no water for many city residents, the problem persisted as several more smaller service lines broke last weekend and into Monday.
“There were two 12-inch lines and two 6-inch. The rest were 2-inches and 3/4-inches. There were probably 18 or 20 counting all the mains and the leaks,” Davis said, adding that some of the leaks that occurred after the water main breaks may have already been problematic. “We can’t associate all of them to the main breaks.”
While the problem appeared to be slowing last week, Davis said there is no single explanation at this point.
The city’s water engineer pondered the problem last week and wondered if it was possible that during the crisis, a water valve got shut off too quickly.
Davis said that would be unlikely since it takes a long time to physically shut off the valve.
“The engineer said it may be associated with turning one of the valves off too quickly, but with it being a 12-inch line, there are generally three turns per inch on a valve. You take 36 rounds you have to make to cut that valve down, so you don’t really do that real quick,” he said.
Shortly after the events, officials wondered if there had been a small earthquake that shook some of the lines, but no reports of anything like that have surfaced. Another idea was that soil temperatures changed and that could have caused some of the smaller breaks.
While theories abound, there has been no one theory that has made sense for all the water lines breaking around the same time. Davis did say, however, that rumors the utility work on Main Street or that the city “over-pressured” the system somehow are false.
He said citizens may never know the true cause of the fluke event.
“Different people look at different factors at what might have happened, but we don’t really have a reason. I don’t know if we ever will,” he added.