Middlebury residents are breathing a sigh of relief after more than 20 consecutive water main breaks plagued the town’s water system throughout the last several weeks.
“It got a little difficult for people, because they kept getting these notices that they should be boiling the water in certain areas of town,” said Tom Hanley, director of emergency management for the town.
Hanley estimated that roughly 1,000 residents have been impacted by both boil water notices and water stoppages. Several hundred residents will not have water until Thursday because of complications related to the town’s final repair, he said.
A fire hydrant, left open in late January, caused the problem by creating a wave of high pressure that broke pipe after pipe, according to Hanley. Some of the system’s pipes are 100 years old, he said. The town has not identified the person who left the hydrant open and does not know the circumstances that led to the incident.
Hanley said the breaks did not impact the entire town, and were mostly concentrated along Route 116, Cady Road and Route 7 South. Many of the same residents experienced water interruptions last August, when the area flooded.
The Department of Public Works has been triaging repairs by fixing the pipes that are “hemorrhaging water the most,” Hanley said.
At least one more minor repair remains before its triage is complete, Hanley said. He expects the repairs to cost about $500,000.
“Over 20 water main breaks is really substantial,” he said, “and you’ve got overtime costs and you got (the cost of parts) and all kinds of things that go into that.”
While the water main breaks were occurring in quick succession, Kathleen Ramsay, the town manager, issued a local emergency declaration that gave town officials purchasing authority so they could move quickly to make repairs.
The town also requested help from the state, but state officials determined that request did not meet the threshold for state or federal aid because the town had the resources in hand to take care of the problem, albeit “at a fairly extraordinary cost,” Hanley said.
That cost does not include a larger assessment of the system, which will likely need additional repairs due to the damage the breaks have caused.
“They don’t know how much more damage may be done to the water system because of this,” he said.
A larger examination of the system is expected to take months.
Bottled water is still available to residents experiencing water outages and who have been issued boil water notices, Hanley said.
