MONTPELIER — Fifteen apartments in Montpelier went without hot water for nearly a week — and had no water at all for several days — after the building’s pipes failed in a string of water main breaks straining Vermont’s capital.
The issue forced Lucky Boardman, the new owner of the 1930s-era apartment complex, to replace the building’s water pipes.
While Boardman completed that work, his tenants filled water buckets from a hose, which was outside of the building and still worked, to flush toilets. Boardman also provided a set of portable toilets, which he placed in the parking lot for tenants to use. Last Thursday, a case of bottled water sat on the landing of the building’s first floor.
“It’s like camping out. You just get used to it,” Kim Kellington, a resident of the building who has lived there for 16 years, told VTDigger. “I’ve learned how to take a shower with a gallon of water in a handheld plastic bucket.”
In Montpelier, the pipes that carry water through the streets — from homes to restaurants and government buildings — have been breaking often. City and state officials say it’s a combination of the city’s old pipes and unusually high pressure of the water running through them.
Boardman bought the Baird Street apartment building on Aug. 1. Less than a week later, on Saturday, Aug. 6, he got a call after a water main broke on nearby School Street. City workers had shut off the water while making repairs.
“It seems, when they turned the water back on, it sent some kind of wave through our building,” Boardman said. “It destroyed the old galvanized lines, because of the pressures the city of Montpelier has.”
Pipes first burst in the building that day. Boardman, who also owns a plumbing business in the Montpelier area, said he isolated the problematic area and turned the water off. On Sunday, he got a call about another break in the building.
“We flew there, come to find out that everything’s just falling apart and flooding the building, pretty much,” he said.
That’s when he understood the issue wasn’t coming from a single burst pipe. He shut down water in the entire building, then measured the pressure.
“That was it,” he said. “We found out that the pressure was extremely large.”
The water pressure, he said, was running at around 200 pounds per square inch, or psi. According to state officials, who regulate city drinking water systems, water pressure in public water systems shouldn’t exceed 90 psi. Typically, drinking water systems operate between 20 psi on the low end and 60 to 90 on the high end.
The “wave” Boardman described broke the building’s pressure-reducing valve, according to Kurt Motyka, the city engineer. Then, the high water pressure broke many of the building’s old pipes.
Boardman said half the building got cold water back last Wednesday, and for the other half, cold water came back on Thursday. All units had hot water by Friday, according to Boardman, although work continues in some of the units. He said he was glad he and his team had the skills to complete the plumbing work on their own.
“Other than that, these people would be out for a long time,” he said. “If you call a plumbing company to get your toilet fixed, you’re waiting a month, currently.”
He lauded the city’s response, and with help from their workers, he resolved the issue in a matter of days. But the underlying problem likely isn’t going anywhere fast.
Montpelier’s drinking water supply comes from Berlin Pond, which is located on a hill above the rest of the city. Gravity carries water downhill to the downtown area. The water flows fast enough to ascend the hills beyond town.
While the system is simple, it has “resulted in very high operating pressures,” Motyka said. Some parts of the system experience around 200 psi, he said — several times above the 20 to 90 psi recommended by the state.
Even though most of the pipes are supposed to be able to withstand 250 psi, Montpelier’s old iron pipes have weakened as they’ve corroded in the city’s acidic clay soils.
The pipes are also challenged by quick changes in the system — such as flowing a fire hydrant, flushing a sprinkler line or another pipe break — which can produce what’s known as a water hammer. Such a wave of pressure takes place when a flow of water suddenly starts or stops.
Because of the water hammer effect, leaks often come in batches, Motyka said. The break that caused trouble at the Baird Street complex was the first of three, and all happened in the same week.
As evidenced by the incident on Baird Street, the high water pressure has caused disruptions for people living and working in Montpelier, and the pipe breaks can pose a safety hazard.
Most of the time, when a pipe breaks, city officials issue boil water notices to all of the people occupying the affected properties. Pipe breaks can cause low pressure in the nearby parts of the system, which “can suck in anything from the outside — E.coli, any sort of bacteria, things of that nature,” said Dana Nagy, who supervises the Drinking Water Community Operations Section of Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
The city is looking at a number of solutions that could address the water main breaks, Motyka said, and they’ve already started replacing some of the iron water pipes with copper ones.
Almost all of the fixes are expensive, said Bill Fraser, Montpelier’s city manager. The city is currently replacing water and sewer lines in a section of the city on East State Street from Main Street to College street, which is a multi-million dollar project, he said.
Despite the cost of the upgrades, state officials have started to push Montpelier to address system-wide water pressure, along with pipe replacements. In that vein, the city is conducting a hydraulic assessment of the drinking water system, and expects to have a final report by November.
Fraser said he’s received concerns from residents in the city about the water main breaks, and he’s aware of other concerns posted to social media.
“There’s always a handful of people that (say), ‘oh, we need to invest in our water main breaks,’ ” he said. “But, you know, it’s typically after something happens, particularly if it’s disruptive.
“Then, understandably, people are upset.”