Aurora city officials discovered a leak in one of the city’s major water pipes over the holidays, an issue complicated by its location under railroad tracks.
The city’s 36-inch southeast transmission main carries about 55% of the drinking water that leaves Aurora’s treatment plant, according to Director of Public Works Jason Bauer. He told the Aurora City Council on Tuesday that leaks typically aren’t a huge problem, as the pipe can be taken out of service for a short time for repairs, but the location of the leak makes it “not an easy fix” and likely to cost over half a million dollars.
“We can’t just dig up the railroad and, you know, put them out of service,” Bauer said. “So, it’s a little bit difficult.”
Luckily, there is lower demand for water at this time of year, so the pipe can be taken out of service temporarily to get the work done, he said. The transmission main connects to the city’s water network at many different points, he said, so it can be bypassed for a time.
According to a map Bauer showed during his presentation, the leak is located under the southern-most track near Solfisburg Park, just west of where North Ohio Street passes over the railroad. The city keeps a close eye on this pipe because of how much water it distributes and because it goes under a variety of different areas like railroad tracks and forest preserves, meaning it has a lot of opportunities to leak, he said.
While the leak hasn’t gotten any worse since city officials noticed it, they aren’t sure if it is a crack or a hole, or how bad it is, since they aren’t able to see it yet, Bauer said.
So, city staff don’t want to spend two months going through the typical bidding process for a construction contract, according to Bauer. Instead, the city will use an existing emergency repair contract to do digging and related work, he said, plus staff reached out to several companies capable of fixing the leak to find one capable of doing it for the lowest price.
“We want to get this moving as quickly as possible and really not wait any longer, because again it’s taken us a couple of weeks just to get to this point,” Bauer said.
The repair is likely to cost at least $600,000 but could be up to $800,000, depending on what additional work the city wants done, he said.
While this may sound like bad news, Aurora Mayor John Laesch said cost estimates originally were around $1 million to $2 million. So the good news, he said, is that staff was able to come up with the current plan.
The plan is to line the pipe, according to Bauer. He said it will take three to four weeks for the company to manufacture the liner, but that in the meantime the construction company already under contract with the city for emergencies will be doing work to prepare the site for the installation of the liner.
Bauer is expecting to bring a roughly $500,000 contract to line the pipe directly to City Council in two weeks. The rest of the project’s cost, he said, will be paying the construction company with the emergency repair contract.
Leaks happen all the time for a variety of reasons, including nearby soil or a defect in the pipe, but it is possible that traffic on the railroad tracks could have caused the leak, Bauer said.
However, the pipe does have a casing that takes the brunt of the force when a train goes over the tracks, he said.
Even if railroad traffic did have something to do with the leak, the company wouldn’t be responsible for the cost of repairs, according to Bauer. He said that the pipe crosses the railroad’s property, so the city takes all the responsibility.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
