Broken water main causes outages throughout Wallace
A large hole where a main water line has broken in Wallace at the intersection of Seconnd and High streets. The broken line resulted in thousands of gallons of water flowing down the street and has left hundreds of residents without water.
Courtesy photo
WALLACE — Not exactly the flash flood we all expected.
Residents in parts of Wallace and the surrounding area were without water last Friday evening after a fracture in a water main caused around 100,000 gallons of water to rush onto the streets of Wallace.
East Shoshone Water District Manager Carl Sheel told the News-Press that the rupture was reported just before 6 p.m. when residents in the area saw water spewing from the corner of High and First streets.
While some large puddles developed in peculiar places while the water flowed freely, no damage was reported by residents and much of it safely emptied into the Placer Creek Dyke. Thanks to a backup reservoir, water shortages were limited to select residences on Wallace's south hill, as well as those who reside along Benthams Road and up Burke Canyon toward Woodland Park.
Along with the help of Shoshone County Fire District No. 1 and the city of Wallace, ESWD repair crews were able to put in place a temporary fix around 3:30 a.m. the following day.
Sheel isn't positive what caused the 6-foot-long rupture in the 91-year-old cast-iron pipe, but has a feeling it may involve sewer work done in the area roughly two years ago where it was left with no compaction underneath.
"We don't know," he said. "There was some stress on the cast-iron pipe apparently. While it was suspended in the air with nothing to support it, it got tension on it."
Moving forward, ESWD plans to get a more permanent fix on the pipe by putting the project out for bid in the near-future.
The Shoshone News-Press will provide updates as they become available.