Quick response by council crews to water main break

12 March 2018

Quick work by Orange City Council’s water, roads and concrete crews had a badly damaged section of the Mitchell Highway back in action in around 36 hours.

The southbound section of Woodward Street was cut between March and Byng streets on Saturday afternoon when water from a broken trunk main burst through the roadway. Crews were quickly on the scene to discover the break was in a 300 mm water main. Traffic control crews were called in to divert traffic around the scene while northbound traffic was unaffected.

Orange Mayor Reg Kidd said the crews did a great job to respond to the potential emergency.

“It turned out the break was in a trunk main that takes water from reservoir to reservoir,” Cr Reg Kidd said. “Pipes like that don’t supply houses directly, so while there may have a been a drop in water pressure, no houses were without water altogether.”

“The crew were working in a foot of water about a metre and a half below the street level. They did a fantastic job and had the new section of 300 mm pipe in place by midnight Saturday.”

“The section of the road that was damaged by water was more than 20 metres long. Road crews were brought in to back fill the hole with gravel and get it ready for sealing.

“It worked out well that a hot mix contractor was due to start work re-sealing in William Street on Sunday night," CR Reg KIdd said. "That crew was diverted to instead add a layer of hot-mix to Woodward Street.

“To have a hole of that size in a major road was a real problem, but then to have traffic back on the highway by 5am on Monday morning was a tremendous effort by our council staff and I’d like to thank them for their hard work.”