A pipe leak causing a puddle on Nome’s 3rd Avenue on Sunday has been unearthed and located, according to Nome Joint Utility System.
NJUS utilities manager John Handeland found out about the broken pipe leaking 200 gallons per minute at 9:00am Sunday morning. “It seems to be a development on King Place, and at least a couple hundred gallons a minute of water. Later in the evening, we reduced our system flows to minimize that, and then, the crews were back to digging on it again.”
Handeland said that in freezing temperatures pipes occasionally still move in the ground. So workers at NJUS followed the water’s path of least resistance by digging from the puddle to the source of the leak. By 7:00pm yesterday, workers had dug into thawed ground, which is an indication of flowing water, and found the source of the problem. The puddle which had been present Sunday night had also been cleaned up.
In addition to the leaky pipe, NJUS responded Monday to a blown fuse affecting electricity to the Nome-Council highway, Nome river, Dexter, KICY, and KNOM.
