Rend Lake Repair Team Works Through the Night to Repair Break, Get Du Quoin on Line
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Full pressure was restored by 3 p.m. Sunday to an 18-inch Rend Lake intercity water system line west of Benton that split wide open shortly after 1 a.m. Sunday.
The water line follows the Canadian National Railroad's Eldorado line that runs between Benton and Du Quoin. The break was about a quarter-mile east of where South Court Street dead ends into the railroad tracks in West City.
A large mobile home court is nestled in the same area.
The control room at the Rend Lake Conservancy District intercity water plant caught the break immediately. Pressure dropped along the 18-mile line that feeds West City, Christopher, Mulkeytown, Du Quoin, Dowell, St. Johns and Tamaroa in Franklin, Perry and Jackson counties.
The break set in motion a methodical search for the damaged section. It didn't take long. You could hear water pouring from the line in a wooded hollow about 50 feet north of and below the rail bed. It had already washed away everything around it.
By 1:30 a.m. the line was located and by 2 a.m. Rend Lake had shut down the water supply to the line. A track hoe carved a path down into the hollow and cleared out a place for trucks and equipment.
All service to West City was shut down. Water pressure dropped overnight in Christopher and Du Quoin.
Du Quoin water superintendent Jeff Whitley relied on reserves in the city's 300,000 water tower and 1 million gallons in underground storage which is cycled through Du Quoin's emergency reserve system every day to keep it fresh.
Du Quoin water pressure dropped, but the city was never without water.
The Du Quoin Police Department dispatcher and city hall personnel put in calls to places like Marshall Browning Hospital, all night fast food restaurants and gas marts to advise them of the break.
The city went on a boil order quickly and remains on a boil order today.
As Sunday school and church goers found out about the major break, cell phones were used to get the word to relatives. Gallon jugs and 24-pack flats of bottled water flew off the shelves at the Du Quoin Wal-Mart and Kroger stores throughout the morning.
The word received at the Du Quoin Police Department and city hall was that a crew was working on the break, but no one knew how serious the break was nor how long it would take to make the repair.
In the meantime, work lights and the lights from the track hoe were giving Rend Lake employees some idea of what they were dealing with--about a four-foot long split in what was once a quarter-inch cast iron line that when buried around 1968 was encased in a rubber skin.
"See what's happened," said one crew member. "They didn't get all this section coated. It was a sloppy job and rusted through," he said. It had become the weakest link in a system that pumps 18 million gallons of water a day to nearly 60 cities from Mount Vernon and Dix to the north; Stone Fort to the south, Mc Leansboro to the east and Du Quoin to he west.
The line is 42-years-old and one can only imagine how many more corroded soft spots are developing.
The repair crew made three well-calculated cuts in the damaged line to get it out of the way. They cut the new line about an eighth-inch short of the breech so that there was enough room to slip both the line and the steel connecting collars into place. A sling on the track hoe was used to lower the splice into place.
By 12 noon on Sunday, the crew was using three-quarter inch ratchets to lock down the last of the bolts on the collars. By 3 p.m. the line was slowly pressurized. Water towers in Christopher and Du Quoin began filling again and water pressure in all the affected communities began returning to normal at about 4 p.m. It was a major repair accomplished during a long night and anxious morning by people who knew what they were doing. It was a large break, but not the largest break on the system. That happened in the late 1980s when an elbow in a 36-inch line blew out west of Benton. The entire system was down for two days.