Courtesy of Jake Wood.

Rural Water Association of Utah (RWAU) Circuit Rider Jake Wood provided assistance to the town of Huntsville, Utah, after a water main break that caused the entire water system to lose pressure and empty the storage tank on Friday, December 13, 2024. The town of approximately 750 people had no water. Wood worked with Mayor Richard Sorenson, Huntsville Town Culinary Water Manager Ron Gault, Water System Distribution Operator Thom Summers, Treatment Plant Operator Angie Jones, and Water System Operator Steve Benjamin to get the system back online as quickly and safely as possible.

"I personally, as the recently assigned lead for the town, learned that Jake had helped us in the past, so he was able to immediately walk on-site and, aided by his previous experiences, help identify the problem and form a plan of action to remediate it," Gault said. "I can't say enough about how helpful he was."

Courtesy of Jake Wood.

Wood assisted the system with determining the location of the broken water main. Leak detection tools were not working under the snowy conditions and deep frost in areas where the line's exact location was unknown. Then, he helped set up pressure gauges on the transmission line from the treatment plant to the storage tank. He determined by the pressure loss to the treatment plant that the leak was near the building due to the pressure reading reaching zero. Every 2.31 feet of elevation increase produces 1 psi (pound per square inch) of pressure. With the gauge reaching a zero reading, Wood determined that the leak was at the same elevation as the main leaving the treatment plant.

Courtesy of Jake Wood.

Coincidently, in the neighboring town of Eden, NRWA's Deputy Chief Executive Officer Vern Steel was waiting for breakfast at a local diner when he learned about a water emergency in Huntsville. A local resident came to buy breakfast burritos at the diner for those working to restore water for the community.

After learning about the water emergency, Steel reached out to RWAU's Dale Pierson and Shannon Rasmussen to ask if staff were on-site. He learned that Wood was the system's first call.

"It is very rewarding that I was on vacation in a random town, and the first person they called for help with a water emergency was a State Rural Water Association employee," Steel said. "Circuit Riders have the unique ability to think of creative solutions to solve issues safely and get water flowing, which is valuable during times of emergency."

Due to the loss of the transmission line from the treatment plant to the elevated storage tank, no water was being pumped to supply the tank. The Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) also issued a boil order for the town of Huntsville and declared an emergency. Wood set up a bypass line from the treatment plant inlet line from the town's wishing well, which does not require treatment, to a fire hydrant outside the building. This quickly helped the water system fill and repressurize. The flow from the well was sufficient to supply the town with water until the leak could be repaired. The storage tank was cleaned, disinfected and a measurable chlorine residual was found throughout the system. Once that was completed, the system was flushed until a normal operating chlorine residual was reached and bacteriological samples were taken. Two sets of 10 samples were taken over a 24-hour period. All the bacteriological samples passed, and DEQ lifted the boil order on December 23, 2024.

Courtesy of Jake Wood.

"Put simply, Jake was an essential element in the team that dealt with the issue. His knowledge, insights, creative problem solving, and can-do personality is a rare combination, and was enormously critical to our successful outcome," Gault said in an email. "Combined with the similar skills of our contracted certified distribution operator, Thom Summers and Sons, we were able to remediate what would have been an otherwise overwhelming catastrophe for our small town. Instead, we successfully survived and formed some bonds and relationships that we will need and benefit from in the future as we deal with the aging water system infrastructure we have in place."

This assistance required 18 hours of travel and 34 hours on-site assistance. It is estimated the help Wood provided resulted in a savings of $11,200 to the system.