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July 10, 2009

City crews repair water main, road work to follow

By M. Scott Carter

It wasn't easy for Connie Allbritton to get to work Thursday morning.

Allbritton, owner of Big Red Bail Bonds, discovered that all roads leading to her office were closed early Thursday.

"It was hard to get to the office," she said. "Peters was blocked off, and for a while, Main and Gray were closed too."

The problem was a broken water main -- a big, broken 12-inch water main.

A problem city crews had been working on since 1 a.m. Thursday.

"We're talking a pretty good-sized line," said Shawn O'Leary, Norman's public works director. "A line that size discharges hundreds of gallons of water per minute."

O'Leary said the problem started early Thursday when the cast-iron water main at the intersection of Gray Street and Peters Avenue ruptured. "We're not sure what caused it. It's a 50-year-old vintage cast-iron main. We're talking lots of water."

Workers were able to shut off the water to the site by about 1:45 a.m., O'Leary said. The line was repaired by about 7 a.m. "It took a little while to locate all the other utilities. But by 7 a.m. they were backfilling the hole."

However, work at the intersection isn't finished.

"Right now we're exploring the extent of the damage," O'Leary said. "It's going to be a fairly extensive repair to the area. A lot of the pavement is washed out and the end result is an intersection that looks pretty bad. There's all sorts of weird things happening there."

O'Leary said a complete repair would be expensive and would take about three weeks to complete.

"There are areas of settlement as far as 30 feet away. This spot is concrete with an asphalt surface. It could be fairly costly to repair it properly -- easily in the $10,000 to $20,000 range. But we'll be doing that on a partial lane basis, allowing traffic to function while we're working."

Still, for Connie Allbritton, her problem only lasted a hour.

"It wasn't that big of deal," she said. "And everything is back to normal now."

For O'Leary, things won't return to normal for about three weeks. "Our crews got right after it, they had the mess cleaned up by morning. But we still have a lot of work to do. We're still trying to determine the extent of the damage."

Street repairs are scheduled to start Monday.

M. Scott Carter 366-3545 scarter@normantranscript.com

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