City Crews Work to Repair Water Main Break in Northeast Fort Scott

The Fort Scott Public Water Distribution crew works on a broken water main in northeast Fort Scott on Wednesday in freezing weather. Taken from its Facebook page.

With temperatures hovering in the single digits, the Fort Scott Water Distribution Department had an uncomfortable day yesterday, to say the least.

The department crew of Bill Lemke, supervisor, along with Brady Coffman, Stanley McKeen, Jason McReynolds, and Joseph Reid spent the day repairing a water main break in the middle of the street on North Broadway in the northeast part of town.

Water was spewing upward from the street.

“It was shooting pretty good,” Brad Matkin, spokesman for the City of Fort Scott said. “They had to dig up the road to find the root cause.”

The crew found the 10-inch water main with the hole in it and put a sleeve over the hole, tightened the bolts on the sleeve, then put the gravel back in the hole, Matkin said.

Matkin wasn’t sure of the number of households without water during the repair.

“North Little (Street) and North Broadway (Street) residents were affected,” Matkin said. “All the water is turned back on.”

Matkin said the cause of the water main break was probably the change in temperature or the age of the pipe.

The crew started at the site about 8 a.m. on Feb. 2, following a call to report the water spewing from the street. Matkin wasn’t sure who called in the incident.

They will finish the clean-up today and smooth out the street, he said.

“In the spring, we’ll do a job of patching the site,” Matkin said.

Public Works

Fort Scott Public Works employs about 15 employees, Matkin said.

“The other guys were removing snow and treating ice,” he said. “We did have a tree fall and they had to remove that.”

Fort Scott city crews are working to clear the streets. Taken from the City of Fort Scott’s Facebook page.

From a post on the City of Fort Scott’s Facebook page last evening:

“Please remember to stay back when coming up on snowplows; with blowing snow and at night it is hard for them to see you if you are too close.
“Also, we understand frustrations because of driveways being covered when our plows are cleaning the roadways and will do our best to limit this but with several inches of snow, this is very hard to control. We want our roadways as safe as possible for our public safety personnel and for our citizens. This is our number one priority. Thank you in advance for understanding and your patience.”

 

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