It’s nothing new for the Latham Park area to have problems after a torrential rainfall like the one on Thursday, Feb. 6. But usually those problems have to do with too much water, not no water at all.
About 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, in the area near Troy Johnson Park, people turned on their faucets and nothing happened.
As it turned out, the big storm last Thursday had cut their water off, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
The storm had caused the bank of the creek that runs through the park to erode, exposing about 60 feet of water pipe that was designed to be underground, not hanging out in the air with no support. The city also theorized that, once exposed, the pipe was hit by a large piece of debris. The hit weakened the pipe and the extra stress caused it to break. Homes on Buckingham Road, Hammel Road, Nottingham Road, Blair Street, Cleburne Street and others in that area had no water Tuesday morning until the water department found the break and resumed service.
The broken pipe exposed some weaknesses in the water system in that area and, according to the city, it will take about two weeks for all the repairs to be made. The city plans to re-lay about 600 feet of water main and move it along the road.
The city also found a couple of valves that needed to be replaced and were completing that job Tuesday afternoon.
The good news is that those repairs reportedly can be made with only a few houses losing water service for less than an hour.
It took some time for the city to find the problem, so residents calling the city Tuesday morning to find out why they had no water were left not knowing much more than that their water hadn’t been cut off because they hadn’t paid their bill. But that’s always good to know.
