Leak shuts off water service on much of Lincoln Road

Workers dig down to fix the leaking water pipe on Lincoln Road. (Photo by Alice Waugh)

A leak in a water pipe under Lincoln Road on Tuesday afternoon meant no water service for a wide swath of Lincoln homes and businesses between Codman Road and Weston Road including some side roads, with service not expected to be restored until late last night.

A contractor’s crew was digging a deep hole Tuesday afternoon as police directed traffic around the soggy street near the intersection with Todd Pond Road after Water Department workers shut off water on either side of the leak. Water Commission Chair Ruth Ann Hendrickson said the long stretch of Lincoln Road affected may have been because of balky shutoff valves near the site of the leak.

“You go to the gate valve on either side [of the leak] to close it, but then if that one isn’t working, you go to the next and then the next” until you find one in working order that can be shut. Valves sometimes corrode and the problem isn’t discovered until the infrequent occasion when workers try to close them.

“It’s well known in the industry” that many gate valves are stuck open, Hendrickson said. The Water Department has a program in place to test all the gate valves in town and “they’ve fixed quite a few already,” but many more still need to be looked at, she added.

It was still unclear Tuesday evening how the leak was discovered or if it was due to a break in the water main itself or a joint between two lengths of pipe. Most leaks occur at joints that fail, she said.

The Water Department learns about a new leak every couple of months. Sometimes they’re discovered only when water collects on the ground above a leak, or — as has happened recently — when a resident reports hearing water rushing into a storm drain underground when the weather is dry, Hendrickson said. The department checks for leaks once a year using listening devices to pick up the sound of running water late at night when most residents are asleep and not using water, she added.