SEQUIM — Excavating was to begin early today in an attempt to uncover the cause of an irrigation pipe break that damaged a portion of Fir Street at North Sequim Avenue when heavy rains flooded the city’s drainage system Sunday.
City Public Works and Prairie Irrigation Co. are working together to repair the broken pipe.
Sequim Public Works Director Paul Haines estimated that it may take most of the week for flows to subside enough to allow crews to repair the damage.
The cause of the rupture has not been determined.
“We don’t know what the problem is,” Haines said.
His department sent an underwater camera down to look at the damage, but Haines said water flows were still too high to see specific damage.
Break
The westbound lane between Sequim and Second avenues was closed Monday because of street failure caused by the broken irrigation line.
The North Sequim Avenue left-turn onto westbound Fir Street was blockaded to prevent more damage.
Both lanes remained closed Tuesday.
While the city warned Monday that residents can expect to see water coming out of the ground at the location north in the gutter on Sequim Avenue, no water was flowing Tuesday.
Throughout the rainy weekend, Haines said, staff worked at high-water areas looking for leaks in the sewer system.
The public works director reported flooding around town from irrigation ditches carrying too much water as stretches of Bell Creek overflowed its banks.
While some road sections and intersections were underwater, Haines said, no private-property damage was reported.
At the peak of the weekend rainstorms, the water reuse sewage treatment plant near Schmuck Road received 2 million gallons a day, Haines said.
The normal flows at the water reuse facility are about 600,000 gallons per day.
On Tuesday, the facility was running at about 1 million gallons of water per day, well above the normal range.
The water reclamation plant, which produces Class A quality water that can be reused for irrigation and industrial uses but not for consumption, continues to treat the wastewater at a level that meets and exceeds water quality discharge requirements.
The plant was given an $11 million upgrade last year to handle future growth.
Haines said the city is actively identifying locations that are contributing to the excess flows and will contact property owners if illegal storm drainage connections to the sanitary sewer system are discovered.
Haines said his department has been told that an unknown number of residents are connecting stormwater runoff pipes from homes into the city’s sewer system, which is contributing to excessive flows during heavy rains.
“It is the property owner’s responsibility to disconnect the storm drainage system and route it to a proper discharge location,” Haines said.
Legally, he said, “the only thing that can be attached to a sanitary sewer system comes from indoors.”
On the other hand, the cause may simply be an aging system.
“It can also be that we have an old sewer system that, as the groundwater level rises, it leaks,” Haines said.
The city’s underwater camera system also could turn up signs of leaking pipes or illegal runoff connections, he said.
The city depends on gravelly soil to drain city streets.
When groundwater rises with heavy flows, flooding results and can take hours to days to drain.
The city is in the process of completing a stormwater-system-needs assessment.
All information on where problems occurred will be helpful to the city staff members who are developing a stormwater system plan.
Residents can report problems to the Sequim Public Works Department at http://tinyurl.com/24p5tel.
Or they can phone 360-683-4908 to report information on flooding they observed during this weekend’s storm.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
