Water main breaks on Washington and Grant Saturday

Water mains on Washington and Grant avenues broke repeatedly this weekend, despite repairs, although at press time Monday both water mains were repaired and working.

“We’re hoping it holds right now,” Havre Public Works Director Dave Peterson said this morning. “They put in close to 100 feet of pipes into the breaks they had on Washington and Grant on the 1200 Block. They finished about 5 p.m. last night on the one on Washington.”

“But they’re just fixes, it’s not replacement,” Peterson said. “The system needs to start replacing the pipe, not just fixing it.

“It’s like putting a patch on a bike tire that’s old,” he added. “You keep patching and patching and at some point you need to replace the tube that’s on the tire.”

Repairs like this weekend’s are expensive, he said, adding that Public Works had to bring in outside contractors with other equipment. The repairs, which are done with PVC pipes, will also be obsolete when the city has the funds to replace piping.

“The repairs won’t help you down the road,” Peterson said. “You would replace the whole thing when you go in to do it. It’s like a bandaid.”

The breaks are caused by the age of the cast iron pipes, which in Highland Park were put in in the late ’30s or ’40s. Because of “hot soils,” as Peterson called them, in the area, electrolysis eats the outside of the pipe away until it is thin.

“Then with the pressure — you’re running over 70 pounds of pressure up in Highland Park — and we’re throwing a lot of water through ’em, it ends up breaking the pipe,” he said, adding that usage is high in the summertime.

“So with the age of the pipe that’s out there, it’s just gonna get worse and worse and worse.” Peterson added.

Public Works has tried to get funding to replace the pipes, he said.

“There isn’t money just in the budget itself to do a lot of line replacement,” Peterson said. “We do it when we can.”

And the department has other expenses in the system, he added.

About a million and a half dollars are being directed toward repainting the inside of the east and west tanks, he said, which have to be coated with a special epoxy paint.

“It’s been almost 35 years since those insides have been repainted. We have them inspected every five years and the last inspection showed that we needed to do this work … to keep them from failing,” he said. “They have to sandblast the old off, fix any parts that might be pitted … and then repaint the inside of them.”

Public Works repainted the west tank last summer and will begin work on the $3.5 million east tank at the end of August, he said.

Restrictions of water uses for the east tank will begin at the end of this month.

“We’ll be taking that tank completely down,” Peterson added.