01/24/2026
Good afternoon everyone,
I’m going to try to explain our South Beach water main rupture situation in chronological order as best as I can.
We had a very nasty leak happen at the Western intersection of Blue Heron Way and Proposal Rock Loop last night. The leak started at approximately 1:00 AM this morning. Thanks to a call from a nearby customer, we were told about the issue. We began by shutting down the entire western section of South Beach to prevent any property damage or backflow from the ruptured water main. We had this section shut down entirely and depressurized by 2:00 AM. We then started pumping out the water and groundwater at the rupture site. We were informed at 5:00 AM, when people awoke, that they had little to no pressure in the portions of South Beach that we did not shut off during the emergency. This issue was caused by the large leak in question, which emptied the Lower Ocean Ridge Reservoir (Tom’s Reservoir) and reduced pressure across all of South Beach. We then went to the Upper Ocean Ridge Reservoir and opened valves, allowing a secondary feed to this section of South Beach with the low/no water pressure. That course of action alleviated the problem with the sections of South Beach where we hadn’t shut off the water at around 5:30 AM. We then received calls from the Hawk Hills subdivision about low/no water pressure. We promptly responded to the Hawk Hills subdivision and discovered that the drain on our system, caused by the immense leak, had caused our Hawk Hills pump station to cavitate and, therefore, not produce pressure. We bled air off our pumps and returned them to normal operations at roughly 6:00 AM. We then loaded our equipment and headed to the site of the major leak. By this time, we had removed enough water to begin excavating the problem area. At around noon, we discovered that we had an 8” valve that had blown apart and slid an 8” water main sideways, therefore causing not only a leak from the valve but also the 8” water main. We began searching for the valve necessary to fix our issue and called for emergency locating services. Unfortunately, I have exhausted all resources to obtain a replacement valve for the currently unserviceable one. We will have to wait until the waterworks suppliers in the valley open at 7:00 AM on Monday. Once we have the valve, we will be able to repair this problem effectively.
As it looks on the ground at the moment, we won’t be able to turn the water on to Nescove Court, Blue Heron Way, and the most Western portions of Proposal Rock Loop until Monday afternoon, after we have replaced the faulty valve. All customers currently affected by the water outage will remain on boil water notices until we receive bacteriological test results from the water main in question on Wednesday, at the earliest.
We appreciate the decorum of our customers affected by this water outage, and we will work as hard as possible to restore your water and prevent this from happening again.
Troy N. Trute
District General Manager
