CARROT RIVER — The last month was a difficult time for the Town of Carrot River due to several water main breaks.
The first was before Christmas on Main Street. It affected three businesses and one residence.
“A water line broke, rusted out,” said Kevin Trew, administrator with the Town of Carrot River. “We felt it was caused by a crack in the pavement that water – storm water has been seeping down into that area and probably contributed in rusting of the line there.”
The line was repaired.
“Usually the Town of Carrot River has a policy if it’s going to take a few days, especially if residences are affected,” Trew said. “We’ll run the water for half an hour intervals so that people can try to get a little bit ahead or a little bit prepared.”
Doing that, while the break is still active, does damage to the street and area due to erosion.
“It did some damage under the surface affecting commercial parking lot... time will tell but we probably have a little bit of erosion underneath sidewalks and whatnot, so the town is preparing that we have to do something about that in early 2019, in the spring once the snow melts.”
The next break was in mid-January.
The town was hopefully it was just a loose fire hydrant and tried tightening it, but it didn’t work. The problem was below the surface.
Due to fire hydrants being an emergency utility they prioritized the situation and sent contractors to fix it immediately.
The temperature was -35°C to -40°C, and contractors had trouble mobilizing equipment but managed to fix most of the leaking: with the exception of a pinhole.
The contractors fixing the leak discovered the fire hydrant had a pinhole inside it, resulting in a slight leak. The town plans to replace the hydrant this coming summer.
Water did not have to be shut off for this repair.
While they were waiting for the contractors to arrive at the hydrant, another water main break happened on the corner of Birch Road and 1st Street SE.
This break affected 11 residents and one business and resulted in water being shut off.
“It was just an extreme break, like leaking, the water was coming to the surface,” Trew said.
The water main was fixed, and the town believes the damage to be caused by rust.
“We don’t have any plans to do any permanent replacement of that line in the spring or anything, happy with the fix on that.”
Less than a week after this break occurred, another leak happened, a block away from the last one.
This one was on 2nd Street SE and two businesses were affected.
“There had been a water main break at a very close proximately to that at Christmas time, 2017.”
The town dug down, repaired the line, replaced the dirt and turned it back on only for a new break to occur on the same line.
“We again, had to shut the water off and pull, dig up again, and repair that,” Trew said. “That was done this Monday, on the 28th.”
The town had successfully repaired the line without further incident.
“There have been three water line breaks within a year in close proximity to each other, so our staff is accessing the situation and we’re pretty sure we’ll have to replace the water line on that block in the summer of 2019.”
The details of these breaks were discussed to council at their regular council meeting Jan. 30.
Council also voted for a two per cent tax increase for homeowners.
“We crunched some numbers, I’m really confident we put together a budget trying to look at a few of the issues the town has,” Trew said. “We got some significant capital projects on the horizon, they have been ongoing in the past and we want to complete some in 2019 and then we also have some new ones starting.”
