Water woes dampen system improvements

There is an old phrase: “sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.” This certainly applied to the City of Buffalo last week as efforts to install the new water system caused all kinds of havoc within the existing pipelines and water towers.

A new water well on Highway 164 was brought on-line last week, but there were some issues to be resolved, and it was shut down until the engineers can come back and address the problems. There are currently three water towers in Buffalo: the new one at Pate Park and older ones by City Hall and by the nursing home. When the city began filling the new water tower, water pressure mounted in the tower by City Hall, which has the lowest elevation of the three. It began to overflow, with water spewing from both the top and the base of the tower.

A cutoff valve on the new tower is not functioning correctly and crews have been called in to correct that problem.

Photos by Laura St. John Other problems surfaced when the water pressure increased with the addition of the new well. Several 6” pipes on the south side of town developed leaks, and on Friday night December 4th, an 8” pipe on Center Street ruptured. Attorney Gail Wilson Ray was called to “put on her wading boots” and come move her car. Water Supervisor Roy Kingsbury and crews of city workers had to dig into the road to expose the break in order to fix it, and they worked non-stop to fix the problem.

As the repairs were being made, mud got into the pipe and area residents and businesses experienced brown-colored water until it was flushed out.

On Monday morning Mayor Royce Dawkins summed up, “Nothing is wrong with the new well, and it’s not the new water lines that are causing us trouble. The leaks that we’ve been having are from these old lines -- some of them 60 years old. We have a little more pressure than we normally had in these lines, so the weaknesses are popping up. I’ve talked to engineers and inspectors and this is normal when you put in a new water system like we are putting in. They’ll have it straightened out before the week’s over.” The Mayor concluded, “Be patient with us -- we’re fixing these water leaks as quickly as we can. And once the pressure stablizes, we don’t expect any more problems.”