Freeze Bursts Pipes Across Northeast

Crews repaired water and sewer lines across the East Coast
PHOTO COURTESY THE TOWN OF NANTUCKET
Brutally cold conditions following the massive “bomb cyclone” snowstorm wreaked havoc up and down the East Coast. One of the worst pipe breaks was a breached sewer line on Nantucket that flushed an estimated 2.5 million gallons of discharge into the Nantucket Harbor, including raw sewage. Workers mitigated the raw-sewage damage by channeling the line’s three discharge points into a single point with a filter to collect solids in the wastewater flow before release into the harbor. Crews also tied a bypass line into a separate force main that runs in the opposite direction of the broken line and treats sewage. Air travelers also faced delays early last week after a massive water-main break at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.