Water mess

Flooding is not often a concern of Saratoga's in the fall months, as it is usually low water season. On the night of October 5, however, the Saratoga Town Council called a brief recess because water was literally flooding Spring Street in front of town hall.

The culprit was a broken water main running from River Street to 1st Street. As council members and town hall staff moved their vehicles from the front of the town hall, it almost seemed like a small-scale disaster movie. Water, no longer contained by the main, forced its way to the top and made its own exit from beneath the asphalt streets.

"We don't know exactly what caused the main to break. There are two things that's going to cause that to break. In this case, it's an old ductile iron line so (it) very well could be fatigue. Looking at the pipe after we get it out of the ground may give us more information," said Jon Winter, director of public works. "We've been kind of busy so we haven't had a real opportunity to go back and do a forensic (analysis) on it or something like that. It's an old line, it's broke before."

At the same time the water main in front of town hall broke, flooding the streets, public works employees were working on a water line near the water tower which keeps pressure on the town's water system. While working on that line, the water tower was isolated from the system and, according to Winter, could not operate on the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system which allowed the pumps at the wellfields to operate on automatic.

"Because we were doing that replacement, that section of line was not functioning. So we had a guy down watching the pressures and what's going on in the town because normally it's based on what's going on in the tank. Because that line was closed, the tank was not part of the system so we had someone just watching it," Winter said. "We had done that three, four months ago when Octagon (Construction) made their connection on that 14 (inch line)."

According to Winter, while the age of the ductile iron pipe could be a contributing factor to the break on October 5, so too could the work done on the corporation stop near the water towers. He added if the main had been newer, it likely wouldn't not have ruptured like it did the night of the council meeting.

"It's just unfortunate they both happened at the same time. If that larger line would have busted a day later, the system would still be operating as normally. You'd still have, potentially, a lot of water because it's a 10 inch line and it's the bottom of the hill," said Winter. "So you still have a lot of water coming out of it but the system would still be on automatic."

Once the water main ruptured, Winter said the department of public works had three goals to achieve; isolate the main on Spring Street, get water back into the system and continue the repairs up by the water tower. Winter said while the broken water main appeared dramatic, the more important step was to get water back to everyone in town. Though the Saratoga Town Council engaged into an emergency contract that night with Alexander Excavation, it would be the town crews who did the excavation and repair of the pipe the following day.

"When this was all going down, the council was anxious to get some work done on this one because the last time this one broke ... the way they got it isolated is they had to turn a lot of valves. It's not a perfect world in our system where you have a valve at the end of each block," Winter said. "We got this one turned down, got pressure building back up in town so everybody had water and we knew we'd probably have to come in and start turning some valves to get this one completely isolated. That night, we didn't have that because our crews were up there working on the other line trying to get it repaired so that would not be an issue."

By the time the water was returned to all of Saratoga, it was approximately 10 p.m. and, nearly 24 hours later, the ruptured main was replaced. After that, public works employees back fed the system from 3rd Street to the Saratoga Fire Department to flush out any contaminants. They then pressurized the system and checked for leaks. Once that was done, the next step was to properly bed the pipe and backfill the hole in front of town hall.

"In a sense, they (the council) really didn't need to call them (Alexander Excavation) in but I think their concern was they wanted to show we were taking care of it right away because we weren't right there on the spot digging it because there was another scenario we had to take care of first," said Winter. "Our guys know the system better than anybody. They know exactly what has to be done and exactly how to get there. We did it based on what we needed to do first, second and third."

According to Winter, the longest anyone went without water following the rupture of the main on Spring Street was three hours. After the line was repaired, it was chlorinated and testing of chlorine residuals throughout the system showed no risk of contamination.

As of Monday afternoon, traffic on Spring Street between 1st and River streets was back to normal with little sign of the damage done the week before.