Three water line breaks over the weekend left some Carbon County residents without culinary water for hours and some for days.
Price River Water Improvement District Director Jeff Richens explained the problem started in Miller Creek Friday evening. That break was repaired and a second break was then found near the Carbon County Fairgrounds.
Richens said PRIWD was pushing six million gallons of water through the system, and the tank on Four-Mile Hill was still virtually empty.
At that point they knew they had another break. Someone mentioned there was water in the river. There shouldn’t have been, since all the water was being released into canals for irrigation. That led crews to the third break, on the west side of Highway 6, near the north Carbonville junction.
Crews were able to locate the break, since water was running into the river at that point.
The water was shut off about a mile from the break on each side.
That water line had been there for decades and ended up being very deep, since the road had been raised substantially over the years.
In order to help the situation Price City connected the hospital to its system and ran a fire hose from one side of Fairgrounds Road to the other, to help with the pressure to PRWID customers in that area. “Price City has been wonderful,” commented Richens.
The first backhoe wasn’t big enough and couldn’t dig down to the pipe. A larger backhoe was brought in from Nelco Contractors. At one point a pump was brought in to remove water from the hole. The water was pumped into the river.
About 28 feet deep the backhoe finally found the pipe, but water was still running into the hole. Workers said the break had obviously been there awhile and had saturated the soil. That, along with natural ground water, continued to fill the hole. At one point the backhoe operator started dipping water from the hole and dumping it in the river.
About 1:30 the work stopped while the crew awaited at concrete box to put in the hole, which allows work to continue without worrying about the sides collapsing on them.
At press time work continued, without knowing when repairs would be complete or the water restored.
UPDATE: Carbon County, Wellington declare ‘state of emergency’ over water outages
A backhoe digs into water-logged ground near Highway 6 and the North Carbonville junction on Monday. Three reported water main breaks left some residents and businesses without water this weekend.