A rupture in a massive water line in Waynesville slated for repairs last Friday was far graver than anticipated and could have easily turned into a multi-day water outage for part of the town had it not been for the ingenuity of the public works crews.
“They did an amazing job of innovating to create a fix and a plan and carry it out,” Waynesville Town Manager Rob Hites said. “A less experienced group of people would have had to call a contractor at that point, but they didn’t even break stride.”
As the crews on the ground wrestled with the massive 20-inch pipes, staff manning the phones back at town hall were navigating a dilemma of their own: mass confusion over which area of town would experience a water outage. The town initially erred on the side of caution, warning residents and businesses in West Waynesville and greater Hazelwood to prepare for a water outage last Friday.
The footprint was later dialed back – but not before the county environmental health department proactively sent a letter to food service businesses advising them they couldn’t be open on Friday.
“Had we known they were going to send those letters out, we would have contacted them and said we have refined the areas that will be without water,” Hites said.
The result was that some businesses closed that wouldn’t have needed to, like Clyde’s Restaurant. And Walmart brought in a bank of portapotties for the day that didn’t end up being needed.
“Once we sat down and looked at the value maps, we realized ‘OK, we can clamp this down and this down and divert water from other mains to keep as many people as possible in service.’ So it was a lot smaller than we originally thought,” Hites said.
Still, given the interconnected nature of the water lines – many of them installed decades ago before good maps – any promise of having water came with a caveat.
Hites said he first learned of the county’s letter to businesses after getting a call from the owner of Haywood Smokehouse on Thursday, asking whether he’d have water. Hites told him they were in the clear.
“They said ‘I understand you are telling me I will have water, but I have this letter telling me I have to shut down, so I am between a rock and a hard place,” Hites said.
Hites said it was partially the town’s fault for not reaching out to the county in the first place.
The letter from the county environmental health department simply meant to notify food-based businesses of the law when there’s a water outage.
“During this time, all food service shall stop until water is restored. This includes the act of preparing, cooking, and distributing all food items,” stated the letter.
“We mailed some out and hand-delivered some and did some spot checking on Friday to make sure nobody was operating that shouldn’t be,” said Garron Bradish, Haywood County Environmental Health Supervisor.
Throughout the day Friday, the town was getting calls from people wondering why their taps were still working.
“They said ‘I’ve got plenty of water, what’s going on? Have you finished?” Hites recalled.
The magic fix
Meanwhile, back at the water repair site located off South Main near Walmart, public works crews were in for a surprise when they discovered the leak wouldn’t be an easy fix.
“They thought it would just need a new clamp,” Hites said.
Instead, they found that earth below the massive 20-inch main had shifted and the pipe had separated.
“They couldn’t just move those pipes back into alignment. They are too heavy and too much earth had moved,” Hites said. “My biggest worry at that point was that it would be repaired before the sun went down.”
The crews came up with a fix and worked at lightning speed, however.
“They had to dig back and cut 5 feet of the line out. They put an 11-degree elbow in to counteract the movement the earth had made, then put in a new section of 20-inch pipe and clamped both of those down,” Hites explained. “To look at a line and see it’s split then determine an 11-degree fix will put it back in alignment, that takes some mental math. That shows the experience the crews have.”
Luckily, when ordering the special over-sized clamp, they’d ordered two just to be safe, and both ended up being needed. It was also lucky they had the 11-degree elbow bend in a 20-inch diameter. It’s larger than is typically found in town water systems, but harkens back to Hazelwood’s factory days.
“This line was actually built straight from the water plant into the industrial section of Hazelwood,” Hites said.
The fix was in by 4 p.m., but it took a couple hours for water pressure to gradually come back as the line refilled. Typically, there would be mud in the lines after a repair like that, leading to discolored water.
“They did a really good job of keeping the flow of water going through the pipe up until the very moment they cut it to make sure no dirt got in the line,” Hites said.
Pressured oxygen, however, would have gotten in the line when it was being refilled, resulting in a milky color, but otherwise harmless.
-0-