Since summer, OCWA has been battling water leaks at transmission line that feeds 6 CNY towns

Syracuse, N.Y. — The Onondaga County Water Authority has been battling leaks at the site of a ruptured transmission line in Cicero going back at least seven months.

In summer, the agency repaired a leak in what’s called a “blowoff valve,” designed to release air pressure in the main eastern transmission line. That line supplies water to 27,000 customers in eastern Onondaga and western Madison counties.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, OCWA discovered a problem with the main transmission line itself. Since then, the agency has been trying to repair a series of increasingly serious leaks.

Those repairs failed. On Dec. 20, the agency shut off the water line. That began a scramble to bring emergency supplies online and reduce water use across the six affected towns east of Syracuse.

OCWA’s director says he thinks the two leaks – the one this summer and the one discovered in November – are unrelated.

“It was a good three months later that this other leak was identified,” Jeff Brown, executive director of OCWA, told syracuse.com | The Post-Standard today. “There’s no reason to believe that they were connected. Based on the erosion that we saw when we unearthed that joint leak, it’s indicative of years of challenging soil and groundwater conditions.”

But in court documents filed in June, OCWA’s director of operations, Geoffrey Miller, said the earlier leak in the valve could have dire consequences for the main transmission line.

“The transmission line is one of OCWA’s critical facilities,” wrote in an affidavit dated June 30. “My concern is that if the (valve) leak is not repaired quickly and gets worse, or worse yet, if it fails catastrophically, it could significantly damage the transmission main.”

A slowdown in June

The problems began at the site, on Wheatley Road in Cicero, early this year when OCWA identified the leak in the underground valve. It appeared to be a minor leak, Brown said, and wasn’t a top priority.

OCWA said in court papers it tried to repair the leak on June 4 with permission of the landowners. But the tenant, Brian Hafner, blocked work crews by parking a bus above the are to be repaired, Brown said.

So the agency took Hafner and his company, BH Enterprises of CNY Corp., to court a month later, asking a judge to order him to move equipment and let OCWA do its work.

Hafner’s attorney, Robert George, said today that Hafner had never refused OCWA access. George said the case was resolved in mid-July.

OCWA finished repairing the valve in mid-August, thanks to a drought that left the soil drier than normal, Brown said.

November discovery

Three months later, however, Miller’s fears were realized. The property owners evicted Hafner this fall and noticed water bubbling up from the ground on the property, Brown said.

That’s how OCWA discovered just before Thanksgiving that the main transmission line was leaking 30 feet downstream from the repaired valve.

It’s possible, Brown said, that the underlying cause of leaks in both the blowoff valve and the transmission line were the same: years of stress on the pipes from high groundwater levels and shifting soils.

Brown said the first transmission main leak was detected Nov. 21. OCWA work crews repaired that leak on Dec. 6 by welding the pipe, he said.

Two days later, though, OCWA found two more leaks downstream from the first one. Those two leaks required more extensive work than the first: Crews cast 10-foot-long concrete rings around the cracks, hoping that would hold until spring, when a permanent repair was planned.

Their hopes were dashed on Dec. 20 when OCWA began feeding water back into the pipe.

“There was a significant drop in system pressures, which indicated that (the repairs) were not working, that there was a more catastrophic event that occurred,” Brown said.

Before the second set of temporary repairs had started in December, OCWA filled a 50-million-gallon reservoir consisting of two storage tanks in Manlius. That water supplied residents while the work was being done.

The reservoirs are now a lifeline for water users after OCWA realized the repairs wouldn’t hold and the line had to be shut down. That 50-million-gallon supply fell steadily to about 12 million, and then to 10 million gallons.

On Monday, OCWA ramped up the public requests for residents and businesses to dramatically reduce water use. It worked, the agency said. Daily water use fell from the typical seasonal total of 5 million gallons per day to about 3.5 million gallons.

That 3.5-million-gallon threshold was crucial, because it matched the amount of water OCWA was able to cobble together each day through a network of emergency pumps and diversion from other water systems.

So far, it’s working, Brown said. Daily water use has fallen to 3.5 million gallons, and the reservoir is at 20% full, as it has been for days.

“It is basically holding steady,” he said.

Staff writer Jon Moss contributed to this story.