Highland Drive is once again up for road repairs after a water-main break forced the city to dig up a portion of the newly-widened road on the weekend.
Public-works director Jen Fretz said city crews received an emergency call on Sunday night (March 9) about the busted main.
“We were lucky in that our crews responded quickly and it wasn’t irrigation season,” she said.
“So. the residents of Juniper weren’t impacted at all. They didn’t notice they were close to being out of water or anything like that.”
Highland Drive was the site of a major widening project last fall, which added a third lane of traffic and a multi-use pathway to the roadway.
Utilities manager Micheal Firlotte said the city had to dig up a section of that work about the length of a city bus, but was able to minimize the damage somewhat by using less-intrusive equipment.
Firlotte said the extreme temperature change over the weekend likely led to the pipe shifting.
It was eventually pulled apart at a joint.
The city hasn’t yet priced out the cost of repairs, but Firlotte said the damage could have been worse than it was.
Because the ground was still partially frozen, water coming out of the pipe wasn’t able to fan out under Highland Drive the way it might have under warmer conditions.
“The pipe didn’t actually break. It was more the pipe actually came apart, so we didn’t have to replace sections and sections of pipe,” he said.
“So, once we do the proper backfill, it’ll be a pave job on that one section of road.”
Fretz said the city can’t do much to stop pipes from shifting when the temperature changes.
“Unfortunately, I suspect we’ll see a lot more of this with the freeze-thaw,” she said.
