By JONATHAN SNYDER
Water Distribution Department Supervisor Dave Hendricks hopes that a study on city water pipes identifying older, narrow and non-reinforced lines will have the funding available to be put in the department’s budget for the next year.
This comes after an incident with a broken water main during a fire at 460 North Oak St. The official fire report stated that “Fire 3 (One of the teams) removed interior crews from the structure due to inefficient water supply via a six inch water main and amount of visible fire. It was later found that the low water pressure was due to a broken water main.”
“I was on the end of the hose, and I watched the water go from a nice, clear water to a brown, dirty water, shooting at the fire,” Fire Chief Don Craig said. “And then it kind of passed, but then we had lower pressure. Later I find out that we had a broken water main down the road. This was the first fire we’ve ever had one collapse on us while we were fighting.”
Eventually, additional tankers were supplied and crews worked to extinguish the blaze. While main breaks during fires are extremely rare, Hendricks and Craig are looking for potential upgrades to infrastructure to give more security during calls. Craig stated that water hammering, a natural occurrence when valves open and close quickly and pressures dramatically change, leads to instances where the water department needs to repair a hydrant.
“The North Oak Street extension main is one of the most problematic — most of the rest of them are not,” Hendricks said. “With everything that’s out there with Almco Steel drawing off of it and where we’ve dug it up because the main was laid on rock, it caused an issue.”
Since the North Oak Street fire, Craig stated that Bluffton Fire will send tanker trucks to any fires near dead-end hydrants, where a water line ends at or near the hydrant itself. Hendricks is also looking to budget an engineering study on city water lines next year to identify lines that are either too narrow for fire protection or older infrastructure lines.
“I’m hooking our 5-in. hydrant lines to a fire hydrant to feed my truck,” Craig said. “So, I got a 5-in. column of water coming to my truck. The first crew that goes in, they take an inch-and-three-quarter hand line in. The next group comes in and they take an inch-and-three-quarter in. Now we have 3.5 in. of water going out. Well, as soon as that next line comes, I’m over 5 in. of water going out. It creates a negative pressure, which can collapse a line.”
“We have a lot of 4-in. (water) lines in town, and I’d like to see a lot of that being replaced,” Hendricks said. “Right now, according to a AWWA (American Water Works Association) standards, if we put anything in, the smallest (line) can be 6 in., because of fire protection and stuff like that.”
Hendricks also stated that he would like to see dead-end hydrant lines be looped around to other nearby mains, to alleviate the pressure. A lot of dead-end hydrant lines are on smaller side streets, such as Honeysuckle Lane and Hollyhock Lane. Hendricks stated that the reasoning behind the dead-end lines lies in developer restrictions.
“When the developer goes in and makes the one way in cul de sac, they do not leave us any right of ways to go from adjoining property in the next street or something like that. So, we have no actual way to loop the main to the next street or the next closest main. I can see the developer side, because everybody wants a secluded street. But I also see our side, where we’ve got to have the water (to a point) where we don’t have an issue.”
jonathan@news-banner.com
