Water line breaks inconvenience Buffalo residents

On Wednesday afternoon residents in part of Buffalo found themselves briefly without water for the second time in as many weeks. In addition to the inconvenience, citizens have expressed concern about safety issues, and the necessity of boiling their water.

Roy Kingsbury, water superintendent for the City of Buffalo, explained that Wednesday's problems were the result of an accident by the workers from Terry Black Construction, a contractor working on the city's new water/ sewer infrastructure. "The contractor was boring under Kennard Street to put in our new line, and he accidently bored through my main," Kingsbury explained. The accident occurred at about 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon and the water was back on by 4:30. Homes and businesses affected were those in the area served by the water tower near the nursing home, with Ridley Block being the largest consumer affected.

Wednesday's break was not related to the major break on September 15. In the early morning hours of that Tuesday, Kingsbury started getting calls around 3:00 a.m. and by the time city workers found the broken line on Center Street, it had totally drained the 50,000-gallon storage tower beside City Hall. Kingsbury described the problem as a line on Center Street which "blew out" in the middle of a coupling. The connecting lines should have had about a 6" overlap, but Kingsbury theorized that this one may have slipped back over the years. Recent heavy rains after the long dry summer may have caused the ground to swell and resulted in the failure of coupling.

In the event of any break in the lines providing the City's drinking water, the State is notified and a Boil Water Notice goes into effect. The problem last week occurred right AFTER both local newspapers had gone to press, so that method of notifying the public was not available. The boil water notice was announced on the Fairfield radio station and on television stations out of both Waco and College Station.

It has been suggested that the county's Reverse 9-1- 1 system also be employed to notify residents any time the quality of their drinking water is compromised, and when the "All Clear" is sounded.