The water emergency in six towns in Onondaga and Madison counties started small and snowballed until it became a crisis, the head of the Onondaga County Water Authority said. OCWA Executive Director Jeff Brown laid out for reporters the timeline of events that led up to the mandatory water conservation order just days before Christmas for 27,000 homes and businesses.
It began in June when they discovered a minor leak in one valve, used to relieve pressure in the water main. The authority had to go to court to get access to the land, which delayed repairs until August.
More issues were found in the same section of water main and repaired in late November when the property owner noticed water bubbling up from underground. The leak was welded shut by December 6. More leaks were found a few days later. On December 20, technicians fed Lake Ontario water back into the 3-and-a-half foot main.
“Shortly thereafter, the pressure significantly dropped in the system and we realized there was a catastrophic impact to the line,” Brown said.
The loose, sandy soil around the pipeline shifted over the years, with the leaks making the shifting worse until the pipeline collapsed.
“We’ve never had a leak in this area,” Brown said of the nearly 50 year old pipe. “So there’s no indication that groundwater (would have been) an issue. We obviously found when we attacked that second leak that there was a groundwater issue. Hindsight being perfect we probably would have let that first leak go” until major repairs could have been scheduled for next spring or summer.”
Instead, those major repairs begin in earnest Monday as crews begin pounding steel walls into that loose soil to prevent cave-ins. The area will be drained of as much water as possible before workers remove and replace the broken water main. In the meantime, water conservation for the six affected towns remains in place.
