Where's the water? (updated - boil order lifted)

ELY- UPDATE: The boil order for Ely was lifted this morning, according to the following post from the City of Ely website:

BOIL WATER ADVISORY Update September 12, 2024 at 11:30am:
The Department of Health has let us know that our sample results have come back and the BOIL WATER ADVISORY has been LIFTED.  Thanks, for your patience during these times.

(Original story) Residents of Ely were facing a boil order for their drinking water this week in the wake of a catastrophic collapse of an ancient water valve that left most of the city without running water for several hours on Tuesday.
When the order might be lifted was unknown when the Timberjay went to press Wednesday afternoon, but the decision to lift will be made by the Minnesota Department of Health, which had already taken initial samples. Residents are advised to turn to the city of Ely website at ely.mn.us for updates.
Aging infrastructure
Losing a city’s water supply is a scenario guaranteed to give any city official nightmares. In Ely, the nightmare became a reality on Tuesday afternoon when an ancient underground valve disintegrated near an ongoing pipe repair, leaving the city high and dry for hours.
“The valve just fell apart,” said Ely Clerk-Treasurer Harold Langowski. “These old iron pipes are from the 1920s or earlier. The pipe joints are just jammed together and sealed with oakum.”
As the valve gave way, water pressure fell drastically throughout the city almost immediately. Some residents at lower levels in the city reported limited water pressure while those living higher on the hill saw none at all. The outage impacted businesses throughout the community as well. Restaurants in town were all closed and bottled water sold out almost immediately.
Between 4 and 5 p.m., city work crews had pumps set up to drain the excavation for the original pipe repair, which had filled with water gushing in from the failed valve.
The next few hours were spent removing the old pipe and valves, followed by cleaning out the excavation anew and assembling the replacement parts, which the city had prudently kept on hand. Most of the new pipe is epoxy-coated stainless steel, according to Langowski, with a lifetime of at least a hundred years.
By 9:30 p.m., work crews had most of the new pieces in the excavation and were fitting them together. Langowski originally estimated the repair would be completed by 8 p.m., but, in the end, it took nearly twice as long. With everything installed, the city started flushing the water lines through the city’s fire hydrants at 11:30 p.m. Homes at lower elevations and on the east side of town got their pressure back first while homes on the hills on the south side of Ely didn’t see normal water pressure until after midnight.
Anatomy of a failure
The first sign of trouble with the aging infrastructure had appeared a few days earlier when a water main connected to the ancient valve sprung a leak. “Public works started yesterday working on fixing a leak,” Ely’s Building Official Doug Whitney told the Timberjay.
“The water had been collecting at the bottom of the hill (the low point in the road just west of Dollar General) for a while, so the pipe probably had been leaking for a while. The city was making that repair now before winter arrived.”
When the city started working on Monday, public works set up a detour south on Third Ave. W., west on W. Harvey St., and then north on Fourth Ave. W. back to Hwy. 169.
The valve failed where the line from the water tower meets 12-inch and 10-inch lines that run underneath the highway. Langowski estimated that public works was about three hours from completing the repair on the leaking pipe when the valve failed, just before 4 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon.
The fallout
The break in the water line was downstream of the treated water in the water tower and city reservoir, both of which were full. Yet the repairs undoubtedly allowed contaminated materials from the excavation and pipe repair into the system. Water lines are cleaned by flushing out the contaminated water but until the city completes flushing its water lines, the water in them will be deemed unsafe for consumption without boiling.
While residents filled the “What’s Up, Ely MN” Facebook group with gripes about the lack of drinking water, Fire Chief David Marshall had bigger worries. He was busy making sure the Ely Fire Department was ready to handle any fire calls that might come up.
“I’ve contacted all the surrounding fire departments, to apprise them of the situation and to arrange for them to send their water tenders with their drop tanks in case we have a fire call,” Marshall said. A drop tank is a portable open-topped tank resembling a low-sided swimming pool which fire departments use in areas that lack a ready water supply. Ely also has its own 2,500-gallon water tender and drop tank.
While the collapse of the valve proved a major inconvenience for city residents and businesses, it did result in the much-needed replacement of a key piece of city infrastructure. And Whitney noted it could have been worse, particularly given the rapid flooding of the excavation located next to the failed valve.
“There’s one good thing to note about this incident, and that is no one was injured with all the wet and mud and failing valves,” said Whitney. “You just don’t know what you’ll find when you dig up these hundred-year-old pipes.”