Crews work to fix water main break on WSU campus
A water main pipe burst early Tuesday morning on the WSU campus, causing a water outage to three buildings and a flood in the basement of another.
The repairs will cost the university an estimated $20,000-25,000, Associate Vice President of Operations Dan Costello said.
WSU Facilities received a call around 6:30 a.m. about a large amount of water coming up through Campus Street and landscaping in front of Duncan-Dunn Hall.
PULLMAN, WASH. — “You prefer these things don’t happen, but we’re prepared when they do,” Costello said. “Once we were notified, we had a really collaborative work effort between several different departments.”
Dale Clark, a plumber who worked on the break, said the water main was four-inches in diameter with a two-inch hole. Five feet of the rusted pipe was cut out and replaced.
The break was caused by the pipe settling onto a rock underneath it, Costello said. Over time the rock had worn into the pipe until it finally burst.
The leak let out 250,000 – 350,000 gallons a day for months, Costello said. The campus usually uses 450 – 500 million gallons a year.
