The water main break on Scott Street last week left some businesses, like the Salvation Army, dealing with multiple floods in a matter of days. According to Travis Rob, Manager of Operations and Facilities for the Town of Fort Frances, multiple ruptures in the pipe occurred on Tuesday, September 23, and another on Saturday, September 27.
“We received reports of a water break on Scott Street early in the morning of September 23rd,” said Rob.
“We mobilized a crew that night to throttle down the main pressure for the affected area and put in locates. We started digging first thing that morning, finding two holes in the bottom of the main. We cut out and replaced that section with a new main. Upon pressurizing the main, a third leak was detected in close proximity to the repaired section.
“We dug the leak area, finding a severely deteriorated water service connection. At this point, we decided to replace [the water main] from the initial two holes to the joint as the pipe showed heavy spalling from what appeared to be a poor casting of the 1980s vintage ductile iron pipe. Water pressure was restored to the main, and no further leaks were noted, [at that time.] The excavation was filled by 8:30 p.m. that evening.”
Following Tuesday’s work, everything seemed good to go, with the three holes in the water main repaired, until another leak was reported that weekend.
“Saturday morning, we were again notified of another water break on Scott Street, with crews again being dispatched to throttle the pressure down and prepare to dig,” said Rob.
“Once we were able to assemble a crew, we excavated the main again just west of the earlier repair, finding yet another hole in the main. We excavated the main and replaced it from the Tuesday break westwardly with a total of 100 inches (2.5m) being replaced across four breaks and rwo excavations. Water was restored Saturday afternoon by approximately 3:30 p.m.”
While the repairs are done, what exactly caused the water main breakage remains unclear.
“We are not sure what caused the breaks to occur,” said Rob.
“It may have just been time and luck with the pipe condition, it may have been system pressure fluctuations, corrosive soils in that specific area, or possibly a combination of all of those things; there is no way to know for sure.”
Water main breaks are never good, but the sheer size of the town, along with the variety, and different ages, of the pipes at work in the town’s infrastructure, make it very difficult and costly to examine each pipe to determine what condition it might be in in order to predict a possible break.
“We have a number of different pipe types and ages around town, many much older than that on Scott Street,” said Rob.
“Unfortunately water main condition is near impossible to investigate without huge capital cost and disruption due to the closed nature of the system. There are some technologies that are out there that can be added into the system, then collected; however, these technologies are expensive to buy and require digging down to the main, opening it and then collecting the detectors downstream with another excavation. Because of this technological limitation, we base our condition assessment on water main age, which we have set at 80 years, meaning that the main on Scott Street was well away from its expected life.”
Because of the breakages in the water main, a drinking water advisory has been issued as a precaution to properties directly affected by the breaks.
“A precautionary drinking water advisory has been issued to properties directly affected by the breaks while we await the receipt of two lab-analyzed and cleared sets of bacteriological samples,” said Rob.
“The second set of samples is due to be taken October 1, and will be driven directly to the lab in Thunder Bay for rush analysis.”
