Even though he's hoping to have the breached sanitary sewer line fixed by late this afternoon, as of press time today Public Works Director Pat Kelly said the call for north-end residents to conserve water remains in place.
"If they can help it, don't wash the dishes, don't flush the toilet," he said. "This is a major sanitary sewer line; pretty much everything north of Fifth Street flows through it."
Sunday, reports came in of raw sewage come out of the manholes on Sixth Street near the underpass, Kelly said. Personnel on call at the time checked out the scene and soon, Kelly said, more personnel were on the scene "and we knew there was a pretty good problem there."
Kelly suspects that there was a sinkhole underground for a while in the area, near Torkelson Repair off South Front Street, and "something finally moved enough to fail the line and plug it."
Crews still aren't able to determine exactly what happened because, as the backhoe has dug down, the hole has filled with leakage. The pumps seem to be "holding their own" and Kelly attributes that in large part to north end residents conserving water.
"We have someone coming back from Fargo as we speak with a bunch of parts and, hopefully, we'll get down to it, see exactly what's wrong, and fix it later today," he said around 10:20 this morning. "Right now, there's a valve that we're trying to get closed but can't because it's under water. We'll seal the rest with sandbags and try to seal that flow off."
In the meantime, he said the sanitary sewer is being bypassed via an adjacent storm sewer line on Sixth Street, and is draining into the Red Lake River.
"Unless something really crazy happens, I think we'll be able to stick with it and get it taken care of later today," Kelly said. "It's a big machine and doesn't take long to dig down."
