Barre residents began losing water around 5 a.m. Thursday after a water main break occurred on South Main Street. The city worked to isolate the break by turning off valves, and by 5 p.m., water was shut off citywide as the low-pressure main was closed to complete repairs.
City Manager Nicolas Storellicastro said water service was expected to be restored Friday evening — about 24 hours after all residents lost water service and several restaurants, coffee shops and the school had to close on Friday because of it.
“Right now the water has been turned back on but it has to be turned back on slowly so that it doesn’t burst any other pipes,” Storellicastro said. “It’s slowly filling the system.”
Storellicastro said the break was primarily caused by aging infrastructure combined with routine pipe flushing.
“We have to flush the pipes every year to get the sediment out and, you know, these are old pipes so they’re vulnerable to the changes of water flow and pressure,” he said, adding that the flushing likely found a weakness in the pipes that caused a rupture.
There have been three big water main breaks in the last two weeks, Storellicastro said.
“The pipe that broke last night is a 100-year-old pipe. The water main break on Prospect Street that broke was a 125-year-old pipe. We’re talking about some pretty old infrastructure here that is very vulnerable,” he said on Friday.
“This is the time of year when they tend to happen, unfortunately. The flushing was supposed to be wrapped up fairly soon here so hopefully that will avoid some of the breaks,” he said.
Storellicastro encouraged residents from Barre to sign up for the city’s new messaging system called Regroup, VT-ALERT and the city’s Facebook page.
“In a situation like this it’s important to get updates from the city so they can get news like this,” he said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Aging pipes cause water main breaks and loss of water in Barre.