Sewer Main Breaks In Woods Hole

By CHRISTOPHER KAZARIAN
This morning, after a sewer main break was discovered in Woods Hole yesterday afternoon, town crews were still working as of press time to replace the pipe that burst.
Late Breaking: A second pipe burst nearby at 11 AM.
The break was reported at 4:30 PM yesterday, Wastewater Superintendent Gerald C. Potamis said, when water was discovered leaking in front of the Lee Side Bar and Grill at the intersection of Luscombe and Railroad avenues. “Upon investigation, we determined it to be wastewater,” he said.
He said the cause of the break has yet to be determined, but anticipated that the pipe, which is roughly 25 years old, had corroded.
Repairs began with locating the leak and shutting down the force main, he said, a process that was complicated by the fact that the area in which the pipe burst has a number of other underground utilities, including a gravity sewer system. “We had to dig carefully so as not to break the gravity sewer and still locate the force main,” he said.
He estimated that the amount of sewage spilled was minimal because crews were able to shut down the main quickly, but did not have an exact figure. “We will find that out afterwards when we look at the pump station records,” he said.
In order to shut down the line so crews could repair it, Mr. Potamis said, sewage had to be pumped by truck from the Woods Hole pump station and sent to the pump station on Jones Road and Palmer Avenue.
A similar procedure was used in December, he said, when a pipe broke underneath the Shining Sea Bikeway, causing roughly 100,000 gallons of raw sewage to discharge onto the bike path and nearby Trunk River. “You isolate the pipe section so you can dig it up, and while you are isolating it, you have to maintain a wastewater flow,” he said.
Both pipes that burst are on the same line, he said, but on the opposite end.
Unlike that previous break, Mr. Potamis said, the odors with this break are not as noxious. “There is a mild smell of bleach. That is how we initially determined it was a wastewater pipe and not a water pipe,” he said. Those passing by, he said, have not been complaining about any odors.
Complicating the job, he said, were last night’s thunderstorms and heavy rains that forced crews to halt work temporarily. Outside of the private company contracted to pump out the wastewater using septic tank haulers, Mr. Potamis said the repair has been handled by the town, with the department of public works, water department, wastewater department and highway department conducting the majority of the work.
Falmouth police have been assisting in the effort, he said, by helping reroute traffic away from Luscombe and Railroad avenues. “People have had to seek an alternative route into the Steamship Authority,” he said.
He was unsure of how much the repair would cost the town, but said that these types of emergencies are budgeted every year. “There is money there for this, but whether this eats away at other things, we don’t know,” he said.
Both Mr. Potamis and Raymond A. Jack, director of the DPW, were on-site throughout the night supervising the work. He anticipated that by 10 AM the pipe would be replaced and the hole would be filled by the highway department. “We are cutting the pipe section out, measuring to replace it now so we can put the new pipe in, clamp it and then back fill it,” he said this morning.