Rash Of Water Main Breaks Fixed, Says Arlington DPW

ARLINGTON, MA — Sunday, the Water Department had to take care of numerous reports of water main breaks, bringing up the total number in town to 10 in the past four days.

In any other given month the town responds to about three such calls to fix issues related to water main breaks. So many in such a short time caused some concern at the DPW.

"The past week we had a rash of breaks that became alarming," said Director of Public Works Michael Rademacher, who added a that any given year there might be something like 36 leaks.

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Rademacher said the leaks were constrained to a certain area of town, the latest ones in the Bishop and the Stratton School area. He and the rest of his staff were wracking their brains to figure out what the problem might be as they fixed leak after expensive leak. Then they figured out the problem was actually minor issue that was causing a bigger one.

A pressure valve, which helps regulate the flow of the water through the pipes, broke and needed to be replaced. "We did that yesterday, " the DPW director told Patch from his office Monday afternoon.

None of the recent leaks required more than 30 homes have to shut their water off while crews repaired the water main, but it was still an inconvenience to the residents in the area, so the DPW was relieved to find the problem and have it fixed.

"Knock on wood," said Rademacher.

There are 130 miles of pipeline underneath Arlington, and some of that pipeline —as with most in the Greater Boston area — is about 80 to 100 years old, according to the director. He said every year for the past decade the DPW works to replace a mile of main, but there's still old piping beneath that his department has to keep an eye on.

"There's a lot of underground infrastructure that we're responsible for," said Rademacher. "There's always going to be old pipe in the ground, but we're trying our best to make smart decisions based on the resources we have about how to maintain it."

Rademacher said Arlington is no worse than any other communities when it comes to it. This year the Water Department's top priorities include the years long process of replacing the water meters around town, which they're doing in house rather than having a consultant come in to do, he said, in part because it helps the town have a better knowledge of the system. When the water meter replacement program ends, the director said it's his hope to be able to have a way for customers to look up their water usage online and receive alerts when it looks like there's something out of the ordinary. That's still some years away, he said.

The second priority is working to reduce the amount of water that goes missing. The Water Department purchases a given amount of water each year from the MWRA and then in turn sells it to customers around Arlington, but in the process some of that goes missing. He said the water meter replacement program will help identify some of where the water is going, but he also has a suspicion that some of the connectors owned by homeowners, connecting private pipe from residential buildings to the town's main line from the years when they were iron, might be starting to decay.

Fun facts from the MWRA:

MWRA's source reservoirs, the Quabbin and Wachusett, can be counted on to safely provide about 300 million gallons per day of water even during periods of extended drought. This amount is called the "safe yield. Arlington gets 100 percent of its water from the MWRA.

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Photo: Director of Public Works Michael Rademacher (in blue) walks across the street to the Department of Public Works building on Grove Street Oct. 16, by Jenna Fisher/Patch