Deep holes along a section of Bridle Path Lane in McLean’s Hunt neighborhood that were created by a water main break have been wreaking havoc on cars and worrying residents over the condition of their drinking water. The water line broke in four places along a 1,000-foot sloping section of the road and was undetected for several hours until a school-bus driver carrying kindergarten students felt a sharp bump and noticed the splitting asphalt.
"Water eroded the street dramatically. It looks like a scene from California after a 5.2 on the Richter scale," resident John Falk said. Things went from bad to worse when a truck with the Fairfax County Water Authority, carrying gavel to fill in the deep pockets created by the erosion, "broke about five feet through the surface and nearly tipped over," Falk said.
Residents have expressed displeasure with how the Water Authority has handled the repair work and the lack of communication with homeowners affected by the break. There was also apprehension over the safety of the drinking water. A test to Falk's water supply, the only one known to have occurred in the affected area, revealed the water was fine. Additional tests are being conducted in a laboratory to make sure.
"We are very cautious. These are drinking-water mains, and we take that very seriously," Water Authority spokeswoman Jeanne Bailey said. One of the first acts a crew doing repair work does, according to Bailey, is to isolate the main involved and clean and disinfect it thoroughly.
DRIVING THE STRETCH of road being worked on by the water department remains hazardous. Bridle Path Lane is a dimly lit street, and until recently there were no markers or cones warning drivers of the pockets in the asphalt. "My son's friend got a flat tire the other night. You can’t see on these roads at night and can’t tell it’s coming," resident Claudia Engler said.
"We are taking the precautions we need to for the driving safety of that area," Bailey said. Those precautions now include a spattering of orange safety cones near the most gaping hole on the street.
A number of homeowners have moved their cars up the street because they don’t know what could happen next or where. "It’s still getting worse. Every day it’s getting worse," said Falk. Getting answers out of water department personnel on-site has proven less than fruitful, according to Falk, who has gone to great lengths to get information from county officials.
Bailey said, "We do the best we can during these situations to tell people what’s going on. It’s unfortunate we weren’t able to do that in this case." Bailey says emergency crews had to make a decision whether to go door-to-door alerting homeowners that water would be shut off or to go ahead and fix the problem.
AS A WHOLE, residents express displeasure at how the county has communicated with them. One went so far as to say it’s a bureaucracy that has a monopoly on the water so they shouldn’t expect much.
The damage to the line is classified as "severe" because it’s a clean break to an 8-inch, cast-iron pipe. Clean breaks "are the kind that are going to give us the most damage," said Bailey. Cast-iron pipes tend to corrode with time and lose the capacity to withstand the combination of surface loads and pressures due to soil, frost heave and water. Intense weather conditions like those recently experienced begin to test the lines.
The road surface damage was due to the sheer volume of water that flowed freely from the rupture. The break was not discovered for at least 12 hours, according to residents. "Roughly 940 gallons a minute was coming out of that pipe. If you think about it, the average pool is 20- 30,000 gallons," Bailey said.
Once discovered, the average repair time for all four breaks in the pipe was less than four hours.
Homeowners will likely have to deal with the road reconstruction for some time. Although the Water Authority will have to repair the holes, it needs to get permission from the Virginia Department Of Transportation (VDOT) before the work can begin. "VDOT’s pretty busy with other things right now, but we have an asphalt contractor on call for when we get the call from VDOT. He’s already been out there and knows what he’ll need," Bailey said. Adding to the time, VDOT will make the Water Authority wait for a few days before inspecting the damage to make sure there aren’t any further breaks.
"We could put a cold patch on it, but they don’t hold up real well in this type of weather. We’d like to do hot patches, but we need to wait for that," Bailey said.
Falk intends to fight the county if asphalt patches are used instead of repaving the entire section of road that was torn up because of the break. "I want them to do curb to curb, not put patches on it. If they think they’re going to do that, they’re going to get a fight from me," said Falk.