17-03-2025
Watertown to replace piping that caused water main crisis in 2023
Mar. 16—WATERTOWN — City officials are starting to plan for a major project to replace a water line that burst in October 2023, causing a massive water main break that crippled the city's water supply for days.
The 16-inch pipe that burst caused the city to nearly run out of water and issue a boil-water advisory and water emergency that lasted four days.
The city will design the water main project this year and then install a new 6,900-foot water line down to Factory Street in 2026.
The project includes replacing the section of piping that burst in front of the Water Treatment and Distribution Complex overnight on Oct. 19, 2023.
The project is under the city's capital project program in the proposed $58.4 million budget for 2024-25. It's projected to cost between $3 million and $4 million, City Engineer Tom Compo said.
"It's a giant project," Compo said.
It's also a complex project because it involves installing valves, crossing 11 side streets and assembling fire hydrants along the way.
Plans now call for a 16-inch water main, but an engineer will determine whether "it can be downsized" to smaller piping, Compo said.
Advantage Watertown — a group of business and community leaders that meet monthly to talk about city issues — first brought up the project during Thursday morning's meeting.
The city will send out Request for Proposals to seek engineering firms to design the project, said Michael A. Lumbis, the city's planning and community develop director.
He's involved in the project because a program he oversees, the Community Block Development Grant program, will provide design funding.
"Surely, it's a big project," Advantage Watertown chairman Jason White said. "It's important to see done, even though it's not a flashy project."
The break — a long slit that was 14 feet long — caused the city's two reservoirs in Thompson Park to nearly empty, leaving much of the city with little or no water.
The Huntington Street line, installed in 1939, has had 10 breaks in recent years and its life expectancy had elapsed.
The planned new water main will not be directly connected to a line that heads to the two reservoirs in the park.
The water main loops throughout the city with other lines on other streets and indirectly with the line that goes up to the reservoirs.
After the water main was repaired, the City Council was criticized for missing an opportunity to replace that Huntington Street main before the water crisis.
Two years earlier, council members could have made the water main a priority but instead chose 15 other water department projects funded by the city's $22 million American Rescue Plant Act funding in 2021.
After-action meetings were held by city staff, county emergency management and the Development Authority of the North Country to assess how the crisis was handled.
They discussed how to avoid a reoccurrence of needing to shut down the entire system during an emergency.
