Capac water main break during construction; boil water alert issued

CAPAC — Residents and businesses in the Village of Capac were without water for a period of time last week, after construction workers hit a large water main while working on the Main Street project.

“There was a 12-inch main that was hit (Aug. 12) while the crew was digging,” said Village Manager Travis Youatt. “With the village being so old and not really knowing what has been buried over the years, it’s hard to know the exact location of everything underground.”

According to Youatt, several items have been discovered while digging along the east side of Main Street in preparation for new infrastructure. 

“They found some old tanks, old lines that even though Miss Dig identified everything they could, some of this stuff just can’t be seen until it is dug up.” 

The water main break was near the intersection at the stoplight in town, running south past the auto parts store.

“Overall, we are pretty happy with the way things have progressed and the crews are moving right along,” Youatt said. “The water main break was unfortunate and we tried to handle it the best we could. There were a lot of calls to be made and we ended up issuing a boil water alert because of the disruption of service to the village.”

The village also sent personnel from the DPW with a dump truck to Port Huron to the Emergency Management department to pick up bottled water for distribution to residents. The break and repairs that followed took longer than the “couple of hours” village officials had predicted as crews worked well into the evening to resolve the issue.

Some residents learned of the break in water service from numerous social media platforms, letting other neighbors know who were not aware. There was considerable concern amongst residents not knowing if the water was safe to use or not.

The boil water alert went out in the afternoon, hours after the break occurred. Residents who were in need of bottled water had to go to Melody Park in downtown and retrieve water from the dump truck on their own, due to the lack of an organized distribution effort.

The $3 million project will allow for a total rebuild of a four block section of Main Street, a major artery for thousands of motorists who travel it to and from the Metro Detroit area every day to go to their place of employment. For years, the section of road has been decimated with pot holes where concrete and pavement broke up, creating large diameter holes and forcing traffic to swerve around the gaping holes.

When completed, some time this fall, the project will feature a new street, lighting, landscaping, sidewalks and other improvements. The federal government has assisted with a portion of the cost of the project, kicking in $1.5 million through finance programs.

“It’s no one’s fault, what happened,” Youatt said of the water main break. “These things happen on jobs like this and we tried to minimize the impact on village residents.” 

The boil water alert was still in effect as of Friday afternoon.