DPW chief seeks solution to Route 1 water pressure

SAUGUS – Back in the day, which is when Route 1 was known as the Newburyport Turnpike, the town’s drinking water pipes crisscrossed beneath the two-lane road, connecting to whatever new enterprise sprang up.Then came progress and two more lanes were added to each side of what is now among the busiest stretches of highway in the U.S. Unfortunately for Public Works Director Joseph Attubato, no one in those early days of highway construction had the foresight to relocate the water lines before laying tons of concrete and asphalt.As a result, a water main break on Route 1 is a major nightmare, as Attubato can attest.Three weeks ago, a water main break was so severe it left some Route 1 restaurants with barely enough water to wash the dishes. Fire Chief James Blanchard was in a quandary because the broken 12-inch cast iron main left him with dangerously low pressure in the hydrants.”We need to be able to control the pressure, and that’s why I want to install gate valves,” Attubato said Thursday. “But they’re expensive, you have to dig up the road, and we probably won’t do it until spring.”According to Attubato, during the deep freeze of mid-February the water main cracked in the southbound lane near the entrance to Kohl’s department store. “When that happened, most of North Saugus was left without water, or at least not enough of it. Same for the Fire Department. They wouldn’t have had enough pressure if they needed it,” he said.”Attubato plans to discuss the details and the cost of the gate installation project with Town Manager Andrew Bisignani.”Some of the work is done automatically using hydraulic cables,” he explained. “Valves would be put in to either side of where you want to install the gate. That would stop the flow of water. Then you cut the main valve and put in the gate.”Obviously, the trench would be refilled.”With that kind of system, you use a gate key, which you put into a hole in the road surface. There’s a box that fits over the valve. The key might be 5 feet long, maybe 8 feet. Long enough to reach from the surface to the valve underground,” he said.Should another break occur, the gates can be closed upstream and downstream from the damaged length of pipe, making repairs easier and faster without cutting off or greatly diminishing the area water supply.”Normally we have very good pressure in that area of town. But the 2-inch diameter service going into the Kohl’s mall was tough. It was on the southbound side after you go beneath the Walnut Street overpass,” he said. “Whenever you have a break on Route 1, it impacts the restaurants, because they need water for health reasons.”Attubato said one water main line is buried under the left-most speed lane in the northbound direction of Route 1. The thickness of concrete and asphalt atop it has increased as highway specifications changed.”So when we have a break there, we have to shut down the speed lane and the middle lane as well. That only leaves you with one lane of traffic flowing. It tends to back up the commuter traffic all the way to Revere,” he said..The public works director estimated the two valves could cost $15,000 or more. “When they widened Route 1 many years ago, they should have thought about the water mains and moved them to the shoulders. But they didn’t,” he said. “So when there’s a break, it’s a headache for everybody. Lots of people are impacted. And when the 90 pounds of pressure in the line drops to 60 pounds or right down to nothing, well, it’s frightening. It’s scary. We need to fix it.”According to “Massachusetts: a guide to its places and people”, the Newburyport Turnpike was built in 1804 as a stagecoach road between Newburyport and Boston. It was unique because over the 35 miles of its length, the roadway deviates only 83 feet from a straight line, giving it the nickname “the airline route.”