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BBC MUNDO RADIO
8 million gallons per hour gush from huge Weston pipe | Backup reservoirs tapped; 2m ordered to boil water
Water surged from the ground in Weston, where a 10-foot-wide pipe ruptured in the morning. (Michael Dwyer/Associated Press) Governor Deval Patrick said residents in Boston and 29 other communities east of Weston should boil water for at least a minute before drinking it to avoid getting sick. He also asked bottled water companies and the National Guard to help make clean water available to residents in the affected communities.
The crisis began around 10 a.m. yesterday when a 10-foot-wide pipe in Weston ruptured, cutting off Greater Boston from the Quabbin Reservoir, where most of its water supply is stored.
The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority said it could continue supplying water by activating a backup system that draws water from the Chestnut Hill Reservoir and Spot Pond Reservoir, as well as an alternate aqueduct, the Sudbury Aqueduct, but the water from those reservoirs is not treated. The water, which one official compared to “untreated pond water,’’ can be used for bathing and flushing toilets, but not for drinking or cooking.
Authorities said they are attempting to set up mobile units to chlorinate the backup water supply, but they cautioned that even so, the water from the backup system would not meet federal drinking water standards.
“This is everyone’s worst nightmare in the water industry,’’ said Frederick A. Laskey, executive director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.
Local officials across the region were scrambling to warn residents about the potential for contamination. In Boston and other communities, police were driving up and down streets in cruisers, using bullhorns to blare boil-water warnings. At Massachusetts General Hospital, staff put up signs declaring: “Don’t drink the water.’’
“I ask everyone to check in on elderly or vulnerable neighbors,’’ the governor said at a press conference with Laskey at the headquarters of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency in Framingham. He asked people to avoid “unnecessary use of water, such as washing cars and lawn-watering,’’ and warned that drinking unboiled water could make people sick.
City officials in Boston were distributing fliers to 14,000 public housing units. City inspectors were also trying to get the word out to restaurant owners, and the Boston Public Health Commission held an emergency conference call with local hospitals, which city officials said would not experience any disruptions in medical care.
The “good news,’’ Laskey said, is that “we continue to maintain the flow for firefighting’’ and for toilets and other nondrinking purposes.
Not every Greater Boston community was affected. Cambridge, for example, has its own water supply. And MWRA spokeswoman Ria Convery said that the authority, working with the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, was able to reconfigure the water pipe lines in the Longwood Medical Area, which straddles the Boston line with Brookline.
That temporary fix has allowed four major medical centers in the area — Children’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — to go about business as usual without having to resort to bottled water, she said.
Many questions remained unanswered. Officials said they did not know how many days it would take to restore clean drinking water to the region, or what caused the relatively new, 7-year-old steel pipe, which was buried 20 feet underground, to break. The break occurred in Weston, underneath Recreation Road.
Laskey said if officials could not repair the pipe with a temporary patch, a custom-made piece of pipe might have to be built. Officials had been building a backup system for the affected pipe, but it is three or four years from completion.
At the location of the break yesterday, brown water was roaring from a massive crater in the ground, sending more than 8 million gallons an hour rushing down a hill by Interstate 95 into the nearby Charles River.
The state Department of Conservation and Recreation said the millions of gallons pouring into the river would not be a problem, even as the river’s elevation rose by 8 inches in some locations and its flow nearly doubled in a matter of hours.
“Our dams can handle this,’’ said Wendy Fox, a spokeswoman for the agency.
Nigel Pickering, senior engineer and watershed modeler for the Charles River Watershed Association, warned that the water entering the river from the break could stir up sediment and carry contaminants.
Officials said the water roaring from the pipe was also making it impossible for repair crews to investigate the location of the leak. Authorities said that contractors and engineers will have to wait until the tunnel drains, hopefully by today, to determine what went wrong.
“I really don’t want to speculate,’’ Laskey said in an interview at the scene of the break. “We’ve got to get there to know.’’
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