Syracuse, NY – Repairing a broken water main in Cicero could take longer than the originally estimated two weeks, officials said today, extending the time residents and businesses in six central New York towns need to conserve water.
Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said the complicated repair could take more than two weeks, but did not give a specific time frame.
“We anticipate it will take more than two weeks, just from a scheduling standpoint,” McMahon said. “If they get to the two-week mark, that’s good, given all the complexities and other things that remain out of their control. If it goes a little bit later, we’re ready for that.”
A key piece of equipment needed to begin the first phase of work won’t arrive until Friday, said Jeff Brown, executive director of the Onondaga County Water Authority.
The news of the extension of time to complete the repair comes at the same time that utility conservation efforts have stabilized reservoirs supplying tens of thousands of customers in Onondaga and Madison counties.
Today is the first day since the break was reported on Saturday that the amount of water being pumped into reservoirs in Manlius has equaled the amount being used by customers. Water levels in those reservoirs in Manlius have stabilized thanks to community conservation measures and OCWA’s successful efforts to find additional water supplies, officials said.
“If we continue this trend, we’re cautiously optimistic that we’ll make it,” McMahon said.
Conservation efforts were supplemented by water supplies from neighboring agencies. The city of Syracuse sends an additional 800,000 gallons a day to DeWitt, and the city of Oneida sends the same amount to areas in Madison County.
At the same time, officials are urging residents of DeWitt and Madison County — and throughout the six-town area — to continue to protect themselves. If usage increases, it will be more likely that some areas will lose water entirely.
A 42-inch-diameter transmission line rupture in Cicero cut off water supplies to six towns in eastern Onondaga County and western Madison County. Those areas typically use 5 million gallons a day, but conservation efforts have reduced consumption to about 3.5 million gallons a day, officials said today.
That’s a critical threshold because authorities said they can provide about 3.5 million gallons a day to a pair of closed reservoirs on Green Lakes Road in Manlius.
That means the risk of communities, particularly those in Manlius and Pompey, running out of water by this weekend has gone down — but it’s still not gone.
“Unfortunately, the Village of Manlius and the northern part of the Town of Pompey will most likely run out of water and as things stand, they could lose water sometime this weekend,” Manlius Mayor Hank Chapman wrote on the village’s website this morning.
Those areas are most vulnerable because they are in remote locations of the OCWA system and furthest from other sources of water flowing into the system, Chapman said.
In case the water runs out, Onondaga County stores 30,000 gallons of water at the Oncenter in downtown Syracuse. Madison County began distributing water today.
Replacing the nearly 150 feet of pipe could take weeks, officials said, because of the complexity of the task. The first step is to drive sheets 40 feet into the ground, essentially creating a tub around the part to be repaired so that groundwater can be pumped out.
The ram that will push those sheets into the soil won’t arrive until Friday, Brown said.
The longest phase of the repair will be pumping out the groundwater contained in the sheet metal so workers can remove the old concrete pipe and replace it with an iron one. Brown said 10 pumps could be needed to drain the site.
Officials have issued mandatory conservation notices telling customers to limit non-essential water use.
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