Van Buren County Schools dismissed early Monday after a system-wide water outage.
Warren County Utility District General Manager Anthony Pelham said the outages began Monday morning. They were caused by an old existing six-inch AC water line rupturing on Andrew K Parker Road about a mile and a half from the schools. Pelham said the rupture caused the system to completely fail.
“There was not an isolation valve between the school and the rupture that we could isolate to keep the school in water,” Pelham said. “So, unfortunately, that entire portion of the system, as you said, was out of water, and we notified the school that they would be without water for several hours.”
Pelham said his crew responded to make repairs around 10am. Pelham said he expected water service to be restored Monday afternoon.
“We are having to cut out a section of pipe, as reported to me, I would expect it to be six to eight feet long where it had split and then ruptured,” Pelham said. “So if you can imagine a six-inch diameter pipe lying in the ground approximately three feet deep, we have to excavate the full length of the pipe, cut out the damaged, cracked portion, and then insert and seal with megalugs and repair clamps to the end of the old to fix with the new piece, and then go back, flush, disinfect and put the water abck in service.”