CSCWD gets sink hole issue resolved quickly
Crews from the Central Shoshone County Water District work to cut out a section of damaged water pipe that runs along McKinley Avenue on Wednesday morning. The pipe had been leaking for a few weeks, which had led to the formation of a sink hole in the uptown area.
Photo by JOSH McDONALD
KELLOGG — The Central Shoshone County Water District mobilized on Wednesday morning to ensure that McKinley Avenue avoided potential disaster.
An odd sinkhole began forming on McKinley Avenue a few weeks back, which prompted the CSCWD to begin exploring the possibility of a possible leak.
One of the main ways that leaks are detected is through the use of geophones, a detector designed to allow a person to carry out electroacoustic leak detection on water-carrying pipe systems.
The first time they utilized the geophones, they were unable to locate anything that would hint at a leak, so they filled the small hole in.
Since leaks don’t fix themselves, and actually tend to get worse as time goes by, when the filled in gravel suddenly disappeared, as well as an attempted asphalt cold patch, it became apparent that there was definitely something wrong with the pipe.
“After the first time we went and looked at it, we just filled it in,” said Chad Nelson with CSCWD. “We don’t want to go dig a hole if we’re not sure a leak is there you know. But when we went back and checked after the gravel fell through, we could definitely hear it on our geophones.”
Crews mobilized quickly, and after getting the pipe exposed, they were able to figure out what had caused the pipe to break.
According to Nelson, the cast line pipe that was broken generally comes in 8-foot segments, and coupled using connectors called bells. These pipes require that the ground around them stay packed in tight so the pipes can’t move, but when the dirt isn’t packed the torque on these lines creates pressure points — especially on the bells which can then buckle, and in this case, lead to pipes breaking.
Fortunately, the crews were able to get the water shut off and had the pipe repaired, and the hole filled back in in roughly 40 minutes.
Central Shoshone County Water District serves Silver Valley residents from Enaville to Osburn.