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Published on: 1/4/2007
Last Visited: 1/4/2007
City of Gainesville's Steve Payne says at the height of the problem water probably came at the rate of about 2,000 gallons per minute.
'We started this morning about 4am, noticing a pressure drop at our plant, and notified our crews.They found this one fairly quickly, at about 6am,' he said.
Public Utility officials said they still do not know what caused the main to burst.
'In our system there are a lot of valves, and one of the things you try to do with a water system is feed water from many different directions to give you redundancy in your system,' he said. 'In doing that, you create a maze that when you try to isolate a certain area, it may become difficult to find the exact valve.'
Payne said they were also having some trouble getting some valves to work properly, and that might create additional repair work.
He said the city warned members of the poultry industry that the break could cause changes in water pressure or volume.
'We did that, not knowing what exactly we might be dealing with and wanted to give our businesses as much notice as we can,' he said. 'So far, we've not had any of those be directly affected, but that is still something that we're watching very closely.'
The break will effect water pressure in a large area including the Dawsonville Highway area, Sardis Road area and the Murrayville area.
Payne said he believes the water supply will remain safe thanks to those supply redundancies contributing to the problem shutting off the water.