Fort Scottians experienced a couple of infrastructure problems on Jan. 23.

There was a power outage.

“From what we are hearing from Evergy (the electric utility)it was an outage in a substation,” Brad Matkin, Fort Scott City Manager said. “They did a great job getting the problem located and solved in a timely manner and we appreciate this.”

According to a call to Evergy, it was a substation problem and the outage was first reported at 10:44 a.m. with power restored at 11:06 a.m.

In addition, there was a water line break in the city.

“A lot of times the weather is a main issue for these water line breaks,” he said.  “They happen more in the winter than in the summer because of the weather changes. One day it is in the 50’s and the next is in the 20’s,”

“They also are caused by the lack of rain,” Matkin said.  “This weather change causes the ground to shift which causes our water lines to break.”

“Other reasons for these water leaks are caused by other utility contractors hitting the water lines when digging, which was the cause for the leak yesterday,” he said.

Unfortunately this problem is not a new one as Fort Scott had 62 water leaks last year, according to Matkin.

What major projects need to happen to minimize these outages of both electricity and water?

“We cannot speak for Evergy on what projects they have in the works, but we do have a couple of water projects we are working with our engineer to get started, but again, with the weather we have, we will have leaks and we will continue to work hard to service our citizens.”

“We do not see very many lateral breaks which is good and shows our lines, even though they are old, are still in good condition,” he said.