Root damage requires replacing Channel Drive water main

Chalk up another headache in 2020.

About 100 La Conner area water customers north of town were without service for about seven hours Friday while Town Public Works crews scrambled to repair a leaking main damaged by large tree roots.

Turns out, their work was just beginning.

After inspecting the situation, Public Works Director Brian Lease determined the damage was extensive enough to require installation of 200 feet of new water line in a new trench about 15 feet from the existing main, near the west shoulder of the road.

Public Works staff and crews from C. Johnson Co., the Oak Harbor firm that re-armored the Swinomish Channel bank below Rainbow Bridge and which has been retained for emergency work here, are installing the new section of water line this week on the westside of Channel Drive just north of Downey Road.

The work site where initial repairs were made proved challenging and not just due to limited daylight on a late afternoon in December.

“It took us six hours to get through the root system to get to the main and figure out what was going on there,” Lease said.

Lease had suspected a problem in the Town water delivery system based on recent data.

“Our water loss had been higher than normal,” he told the Weekly News on Monday. “We put a leak detection plan in place when there’s an eight per cent water loss for two consecutive months. It was actually a 27 per cent loss in this case.”

Lease worked with Town Hall staff to track customer water billing trends to help determine where the leakage was occurring.

Ultimately, the problem was linked to trees in Susan Macek and Dave Buchan's front yard long ago planted atop the water main.

The leak was not visible because of the area’s sandy soil composition, which prevented water from immediately seeping to the surface of the ground.

Literally digging beneath the surface brought the issue into focus.

“The water line was in such bad shape,” Lease said, “that we have to put in a new line 15 feet away from the existing one.”