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Council hears account of Labor Day water main failure that lost about 4,000 gallons a minute
Summary
Public works staff described a major cast-iron main failure behind the Youth Services Building that discharged an estimated 4,000 gallons per minute, SCADA callouts failed due to a copper phone line, and crews repaired the line over several days while planning redundancy improvements.
At the City Council meeting on Sept. 8, 2025, public works staff reported that on Labor Day morning crews discovered a major leak in a cast‑iron water main behind the Youth Services Building adjacent to the canal after residents in the northeast part of town experienced low water pressure. Staff said the system lost roughly 4,000 gallons per minute at the leak before crews isolated the section and began repairs.
Public works staff said SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) monitoring recorded rapidly dropping reservoir levels and attempted automated callouts starting around 10:30 p.m., but the callouts were not received because the copper phone line to the shop had failed; email attempts also did not reach staff until later. One employee was notified about 1 a.m. but did not hear the alert because the phone was on silent. The staff member said the city is moving to voice‑over‑Internet callouts and planning cellular failover to build redundancy.
Crews isolated multiple sections of pipe during the search before, with assistance from the Freedom Police Department, locating the leak at about 7:30 a.m. The section removed was a cast‑iron pipe the presenter said was likely installed around 1950; staff described one jagged, eroded edge and said they believe the pipe had been leaking for a long period before catastrophic failure. "We were hemorrhaging water over 4,000 gallons a minute," the public works staff said.
Crews reassembled the line using repair couplers with restrained joints and left the system off while they confirmed soil compaction and joint integrity; the presenter said the repair was physically buttoned up by Tuesday evening and the main was returned to service the following Wednesday morning. The city issued a boil‑water order during the outage and worked across departments on mitigation; staff thanked public works crews and other departments for their response.
Staff described short‑term consequences of restoring higher pressures: stirred sediment produced temporary dirty water in some areas, and staff cautioned there may be additional small leaks on homeowners’ service lines or meters as system pressure returns to design levels. The presenter said ongoing projects — a new reservoir, Well 10 and Well 11 and a booster pump station and pressure zone — would increase redundancy and reduce the likelihood of a similar pressure loss in the future once those components are in service.
In addition to equipment upgrades, staff described plans to strengthen SCADA callout reliability by moving to a fiber/VoIP solution and adding cellular fallback. The presenter noted potential billing discussions with the Bureau of Reclamation because much of the lost water flowed into the canal. Council members asked about inspection options for older water mains and about whether sensors or zoned pressure monitoring could narrow leak locations in future events; staff said the city is evaluating SCADA improvements but that many water‑main inspection technologies are designed for sewer lines and are not directly transferable to pressure mains.
