TOLEDO, OH (Toledo News Now) – Toledo had several water main breaks Friday, soaking the streets and stressing the departments taxed with fixing them.
Conditions are dry now, but Friday, water was gushing down Superior and Adams. Crews from Water Distribution were busy patching up eight water main breaks across the city.
Officials said once summer hits in the city, big, wet problems start.
"This time of year, it's just the volume of water. In the winter time, we have the problem with frost that makes the ground move. But this time of year, we're using a large amount of volume," explained Terry Russeau.
Lawns being watered and kids playing in open hydrants are all sights and sounds of a typical Toledo summer. They are good for cool relief, but all going at the same time means bad news for the city's miles and miles of pipes.
"You could get 2,500 gallons coming out of a fire hydrant. When you get that large of an amount of water flowing, and you turn it down real quick, it's like when you turn the faucet down in your house, and you hear the pipes shake. Well, this is on a larger scale," said Russeau.
Russeau makes sure all the pipes get patched when breaks happen. He said his department kept busy with eight breaks Friday.
"It taxes onto our division. I mean, it was a holiday weekend, we had people off on vacation," said Russeau.
According to Russeau, to fix one of the pipes costs nearly $3,000 from start to finish and can bring more problems to the surface.
"You have a water main break like that, it could give the road away. Plus, we have to dig amongst other utilities. We have gas lines in the hole. We have Edison, other utilities. We've got to dig around and make sure we don't hit anything," said Russeau.
Certain areas are under a water advisory as a result of those water main breaks.
As a safety precaution, everyone on Adams from Erie to Summit and St. Clair from Madison to Adams are on a water boil advisory to make sure that water has not been contaminated.
The advisory is causing downtown businesses, like Lazeez, to take extra steps to get food on the table and keep things clean.
"When we came in Sunday morning, that's the first thing we did: boiled a couple pots, and then we filled the sinks. We kinda worked our way around it. The rice, for example, we had to boil the water, let it cool down, let the rice soak in it, then after that, put them in the water and let them boil again," explained owner Sam Salami.
The water boil advisory will be lifted Tuesday at 5 p.m.
Copyright 2012 Toledo News Now. All rights reserved.
A viewer photo of the water main break on Superior and Adams downtown.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 WorldNow and Toledo News Now, a Raycom Media Station. 
