Five water main breaks in one day

In the 31 years that he has been Sheffield Lake’s city superintendent, Pat Hastings said he’s never had five water main breaks in one day.

But that all changed on Oct. 25, and he is still trying to figure out why it occurred.

As of the afternoon of Oct. 26, Hastings was still working on one on Irving Park Boulevard. The other four have been repaired, he said.

The city had other water main breaks on Harris Road andHawthorne Avenue and two on Thelma Drive.

“We have the valves isolated so the water loss is really low right now,” he said. “We haven’t had five breaks at one time. I used pretty much the extent of our manpower.”

Avon Lake Regional Water, which supplies water to the city, also doesn’t know what the cause is yet, Hastings said.

A lot of times when a water main breaks, it’s typically because of pressure.

Hastings is hopeful he can figure out what exactly happened so it doesn’t happen again.

Mayor Dennis Bring said during City Council’s regular meeting Oct. 25 that he’s sure it’s something with the pressure that is coming from Avon Lake.

He said three of the water main breaks were major but was unsure about the other two.

“I know that there are numerous ones in Avon Lake, too,” he said. “I think the water pressure is down right now, so until we get a chance to fix all these, we got the crews out there.”

Councilman Mark Cizl asked the mayor about a possible water main break at Walker Road, but Bring indicated that the gas company or one of the city’s workers must have hit a certain plug that popped off and shot out water. It was later resealed.