Freeze Bursts Pipes Across Northeast

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.