Village to replace water main

Sheffield Village Council took emergency action to replace a broken water main.

Sheffield Village Mayor John Hunter said the water main located under Interstate 90 at the edge of Old Abbe Road North broke down on July 18 and will need to be replaced after work crews with the city’s service department were unable to repair it.

Council approved a resolution to authorize it to apply for grants with the Ohio Water Development Authority and other sources of funding to replace the water main. Hunter added additional funding would come out of the water fund and is hoping to get a zero percent loan to replace the aging water main which dates back to 1965.

Hunter commended the work of the service department for its quick response and efforts to minimize the impact to residents. He added city governments are required to set aside a certain amount of money in order to prepare for emergencies and to prevent the burden from being shifted to taxpayers through water rate hikes.

“Thankfully our service department was able to reroute the line around that due to the loops we put in,” Hunter said.

“It’s again a case of our council being proactive and being prepared for incidents like this and I commend their forward thinking in doing so.”

A number of years ago the village began installing loops in the water line allowing to re-route sections of the line in order to prevent water outages to large sections of the city in the event of a break.

“In just in a few minutes we narrowed it down to three houses and then we had to go down and put in a new shut off valve and a switch valve to pick up those three houses from another line,” Hunter added.