OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Fredonia crews continue work on repairs at Temple Street and Central Avenue, which has closed the intersection at times.

Fredonia officials want to replace a 19th-century water main near One Temple Square after a catastrophic leak more than two weeks ago.

Department of Public Works Director David Bird described efforts to fix the breach, along with a longer-term plan to prevent such an event from happening again, at a Board of Trustees workshop.

Bird said it took six hours to even find the leak. DPW workers “had to access 22 valves, plus three valves we couldn’t even get on because they were frozen or bent over, just to try to get the water slowed enough to where we could make the repair.”

The leak sent rivers of water down Central Avenue and Temple Street on a bitterly cold night.

Bird continued, “Come to find out in that area where the valve was leaking, if you were to look at the valve, two feet to the right of the valves is an old valve that was left in from a previous break that was never removed, and two feet to the left of that valve is a T going off to a fire hydrant. In that eight foot span, there’s roughly a thousand pounds of piping.”

To make things even more challenging, the pipe was sheathed in concrete, so workers had to break that too. St. George Enterprises workers eventually came in to relieve exhausted DPW employees, at least one of whom worked for more than 24 hours straight.

Fredonia experienced a boil water order the same weekend as the main break. “The leak did not lead to the boil water order,” Bird said. The failure of a frozen chlorinator pump was reportedly the cause of that.

However, a separate water conservation order was directly related to the leak, he said.

A couple days after the leak was repaired, Bird met with Mayor Michael Ferguson, Trustee Jon Espersen, officials from St. George’s, and village engineers LaBella, about a plan to replace the pipe.

Bird said it’s the oldest main in Fredonia, dating from 1883. “We’re at some point expecting to connect to the North County Water District at the end of that piping. It makes no sense whatsoever to replace part of that pipe. What we’re proposing with the state is, all of that section of old piping be replaced, new junctions and connections for everyone who lives on that section of Central and Temple.”

Village officials declared a water state of emergency primarily to increase the chances of state funding for such a project.

Bird also envisions installing updated valves that “will give us the ability to shut off the water on major lines — instead of 22 valves, we can shut off sections of four or five valves.

“We’re now on a very good plan,” the DPW chief said. “If this goes through with the state… we can literally have this done in a year, from what it sounds like to me. Then it’s a matter of, we can repave Central Avenue, which has been a giant issue.”

Espersen later also mentioned the action plan meeting, stating that “everybody who worked for DPW in the last 30 years was probably there.” He noted that state officials tell the village that before it applies for funding, “we have to know what we are paying for.”

Espersen said the main “running from the park (apparently Barker Common) down to Central and Temple was the most critical fix we needed to look at.”

Bird said if the state ends up funding the project, there should be money included for the Central Avenue repaving.

During the last week, Temple Street and Central Avenue were closed to traffic at times as crews were doing repair work in the area.