Crews finish repairing water line ahead of Chubbuck Days as citywide boil order continues
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UPDATE: Chubbuck ends boil order after tests come back clean
CHUBBUCK – Public works staff have finished repairing a street before it’s needed for the city’s biggest celebration of the year.
Following a water line breakage that prompted a citywide boil order, Chubbuck city crews worked day and night to stop the flooding on Hawthorne Road between Bonanza Avenue and West Chubbuck Road. Mayor Kevin England told EastIdahoNews.com a little after 2 p.m. on Friday that the area where the break occurred had been repaired, and that the approximately quarter mile of road would be reopened in “an hour or two.”
While the boil order is ongoing until further notice, England praised city employees for working to fix the breakage before the road is used in the route for the Chubbuck Days Parade on Saturday.
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“As soon as the city became aware this was going on, we took corrective steps, and at this point, things are in place to get things back to normal as quickly as possible,” England said.
England knows that the water line broke sometime close to noon on Thursday because he was at home when he lost water pressure in his faucets.
“I had gotten some water for my lunch, and when I went to get some more … it was just a trickle of water,” England said.
This was because city employees had to stop the pipe’ water flow to begin addressing the break.
And the mayor’s house wasn’t the only one temporarily without water.
“When they turned it off originally, there pretty much wasn’t water in the city of Chubbuck,” England said, adding that it lasted for “a couple of hours.”
In a voice message, Public Works Director Bridger Morrison said that the city didn’t know what caused the breakage.
“As we excavated down to the pipe, we did find rock in the ground. It’s likely that the rock just caused some damage to the pipe over time. There were some pretty big rocks that we took out of the trench. It was a cracked pipe when we got down there and had to fix it,” Morrison said.
Due to the breakage, water flooded the street as well as the front and backyards of some of the area’s residents. A video posted to the Life in Pocatello Facebook page shows the level of flooding a little after 1 p.m.
LuAn Hemenway, who lives in the flood area, told EastIdahoNews.com that she got a call from her husband, DaWane, that afternoon while she was at work.
“Don’t come home. Park at the church, and I’ll bring you a pair of shoes to wade home in. It’s muddy,” Hemenway recounted.
While Hemenway’s only experienced flooding in their yard, she said that some of her neighbors whose houses are farther downhill experienced flooding in their garages and basements.
“Their little basement stairways were kind of like waterfalls,” Hemenway said.
While the city is under a boil order, it has not found any contaminants in its water supply so far.
Allan Johnson, regional engineering manager of the Department of Environmental Quality, said the boil order was necessary because of the drop in the city’s water pressure below 20 psi, or pounds per square inch.
“When the system loses pressure, that is an opportunity for contaminants to enter the system, and particularly bacteria is what we’re concerned about. Bacteria is present in the environment. It’s present in the soil. … There may not be contamination, we don’t know. We will find out when the samples come back,” Johnson said.
Although there isn’t a required number of samples that need to come back clear for the city to lift the boil order, Johnson expects a city of Chubbuck’s size to receive “half a dozen” samples at various places across town before it lifts the boil order.
England said the city could find out as soon as Saturday morning that its samples have come back clean. The Thursday news release also stated that the city would flush its water lines to reduce any possible contamination.
If the results come back indicating contamination, the city would continue to take samples and flush its water lines until it receives enough clean samples, Johnson explained.
And if samples don’t come back clean or on time, the city may have to cancel one of its free events at the Chubbuck Days festival.
“If we can’t get a clean report back … before tomorrow afternoon, we will not do what they call the Fireman’s Rain, when (the fire department) shoots water from the ladder truck through the hose,” England said.
While England wants the situation to go back to normal as soon as possible, he stressed that wasn’t the most important consideration.
“The most important thing is public safety, so we’re not going to push anything. Things will be done when they can be done,” England said.
Additionally, Hemenway noted that she and her neighbors watched how city employees worked to address the flooding and get the road reopened.
“Everybody’s really impressed with how the city responded. The city was right here with us. They were taking care of everything really (well),” Hemenway said.