The second water main rupture in three days sent city crews hustling to the Little Village neighborhood, where a century-old pipe ripped open and flooded streets early Tuesday morning.
Water Management Department workers quickly tamed the deluge near Claremont and Blue Island Avenues, averting the basement floodings that local residents dealt with when a section of the same 8-inch main broke about a year ago, said spokesman Tom LaPorte. Officials do not know what caused the break.
Sections of Blue Island and Western Avenues were closed for a short time while water dissipated down storm drains. Repairs were completed and traffic was fully restored by about 10 a.m., LaPorte added. City salt trucks ensured that the water wouldn’t freeze into a hazardous slick.
The broken segment was an 8-inch cast iron pipe and was installed “near the turn of the century,” LaPorte said. A water main that ruptured Sunday on the 1800 block of North Clark was a 36-inch reinforced concrete pipe.
Crews replaced the Clark Street pipe Monday, but work to repair the damaged roadway likely will continue into Saturday, LaPorte said. Until then, the block will remain closed. The broken pipe has been sent to a lab to determine the cause of the fracture.
Water main breaks such as these often accompany the oncoming of winter in Chicago. Last year, a major main cracked on the 3500 block of Lake Shore Drive, opening a crater that engulfed four cars.
LaPorte said the onset of winter always introduces new stresses to the city’s water system.
Pipes vulnerable to “frost penetration” can crack from the added pressure of expanding water molecules, explained Charles Dowding, a professor in Northwestern University’s department of civil and environmental engineering.
“There are so many miles of pipes in the ground–there’s a lot of exposure out there,” he said. “There are water main breaks that occur all of the time.”
The pipes are buried deep enough, however, that these breaks cannot be unequivocally attributed to cold weather, Dowding said.
In fact, last year’s Lake Shore Drive break wasn’t weather related. According to the city, the crack developed as the steel reinforcement within the pipe’s walls corroded.
———-
Compiled from RedEye news services and edited by Patrick Olsen (polsen@tribune.com) and alBerto Trevino (atrevino@tribune.com)
