Crews Working to Replace busted Pipe

The Pipe break caused some North Chattanooga residents to experience some water pressure issues. Now, Tennessee American Water has crews working hard to patch the leak…..

The 51 year old, 30 inch main runs completely under the Tennessee River supplying water to tanks and north Chattanooga residents… On Monday, Tennessee American Water became aware of a problem with the pipe and sent some divers into the river to check it out…..

“They went down and found a whole in the pipe..The pipe had just kind of blew a hole in the side of it,” said Grady Stout, project manager.

The pipe was shut down so repairs could be made with water currently flowing through a second line, but this one will need to be fixed to help ease the load on the river crossing.

“It is working. It is efficient, but this will help to provide redundancy,” said Stout.

With the breach in the pipe being completely submerged by the Tennessee River patching the pipe will be a bit tricky.

“It presents a great challenge for access…people from all over the country are helping work on this project.”

With the access problem in mind Tennessee American Water came up with a plan… They will take a new 24 inch pipe and slide it through the old 30 inch pipe allowing the old pipe to act as a casing for the new line.

“We had to weigh how long this was going to take versus what kind of flow. We could get across the river with different options and this provides the most flow and one of the quickest time frames.”

Crews have been working to fuse the new plastic pipe together. That will need to be about 18 hundred feet long when it is completed to be dragged all the way to the other side of the river… The goal is to have the project complete by next week.

“All of our crews are working safely and as quickly as possible to get this solved. It is a huge project, and we hope to have it done safely by the end of next week.