Waitsfield will repair a leak to its municipal water system that has increased the town’s water system usage by 60,000 to 70,000 gallons a day since December.
The town’s system operator isolated the leak to a curb stop in front of the Waitsfield Wine Shoppe and the leak is audible from that location, Waitsfield Select Board chair Brian Shupe said.
At a March 16 board meeting, members said the long-suspected leak has finally been pinpointed, and a plan is in place to fix it — though not without some uncertainty.
Shupe said the leak is at a curb stop in front of the wine shop. The business is not connected to the town system and that means that no connected user was getting billed for excess usage which would have helped pinpoint the location of the leak. The town’s water system operator Simon Operating Services has been engaged in a lengthy discovery process since the leak was discovered, gradually isolated the leak to Waitsfield Village and further to the Waitsfield Wine Shopped.
The repair work gets underway on Tuesday, March 24. Kingsbury Construction will manage the project. The work will require removing sections of sidewalk and digging into an on-street parking area along Route 100, but not into the travel lane itself. Shupe said the job is expected to take only a few hours, or at most half a day, if all goes according to plan.
But conditions below the surface remain a major unknown.
“We don’t know what’s going to be under the sidewalk,” Shupe said. “
Town Administrator York Haverkamp echoed that concern, noting that saturated ground could complicate the repair.
“It really might be soupy, and we don’t know,” Haverkamp said. “We could crack open that pavement and we’ll see if there’s nothing under there.”
The curb stop — a capped connection point extending from the main water line — is located beneath the sidewalk and is estimated to be more than six feet deep, requiring a sizable excavation. Shupe said the town also plans to relocate it closer to the building during the repair to avoid similar disruptions in the future.
Despite the confidence in the diagnosis, officials caution that any excavation around water infrastructure carries some risk.
“If everybody is right and it’s the curb stop, it won’t affect service on the main line,” Shupe said. “The concern is anytime you’re using heavy equipment to dig around pipes … there always is a remote chance that there could be a need to cut off service.”
If that happens, the town could issue a boil water notice affecting users in the area. While officials said such a scenario is unlikely, they are preparing residents and businesses in advance.
“We’re optimistic that’s not going to be required,” Shupe said. “But we do want to, for — to be as cautious as possible and to be as transparent as possible — we’re trying to alert folks that that is a possibility.”
Haverkamp said the town is sending letters to affected water users outlining what to expect and how to stay informed.
“Basically the letter that’s going to go out is kind of like a bullet point — here’s what you need to know,” he said. “Please look at the news alert on the website to know if there’s a boil notice, because it’s hard to do it otherwise.”
The town is also planning to use multiple communication channels, including The Valley Reporter, its website, social media and Vermont’s emergency alert system, known as VT-Alert.
Select Board member Fred Messer noted that system can quickly notify residents if conditions change.
Board member David Babbott Klein suggested the situation highlights the need for a more robust, direct communication system with water users.
“It does bring to my mind, should we set up a way — like, do we have people’s cell phone numbers for a number of users?” he said. “In the future … there’s been disruption. There needs to be a boil water notice, or the service is going to get impacted, and that can’t go in the mail.”
Haverkamp said the town is exploring options, including systems that allow officials to draw a geographic area and automatically send text alerts to affected users.
Select Board member Chach Curtis added that such tools could also be useful for future wastewater issues.
“In anticipation of wastewater would be great, too,” Curtis said.
In the meantime, town officials are conducting direct outreach to key water users in advance of next week’s work.
Some, like a local dentist and Lawson’s and restaurants, may temporarily shut down operations during the repair as a precaution.
“It’s probably good that it’s happening at the end of March,” Shupe said, noting the work is scheduled outside peak tourism periods.
The leak itself had been difficult to detect for weeks, in part because it did not surface and did not trigger unusual water usage for any customer.
“This was one of the problems, is that no customer was experiencing overage,” Shupe said.
Earlier acoustic testing also failed to clearly identify the source. But as conditions changed, the leak became audible from above ground.
“As he went from the curb stop back to the main, the sound got less and less and went away,” Shupe said of earlier testing.
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