The heavy freeze earlier this month followed by this January thaw is causing problems for water pipes not only in area homes and businesses, but in city water lines as well.
A water main break was reported late on Tuesday evening, January 23 at 3rd Avenue and Bates Street in Flandreau. Repairs the following day interrupted service to the entire city for about three hours while engineers and city crews triaged the line. Homes and businesses waited out the repairs and resumed business as usual while the school district released students early for the day as a result.
The infrastructure is in an area that has not yet seen water and sewer line replacement — the city is in the midst of a multi-year project to replace the underground pipes.
“The water main break we experienced this week fell just outside of the scope of the project that we are pursuing this Spring. The City had a 10” main break that has likely been deteriorating for several years. The line in question has not been replaced for a significant number of years and will be replaced in a future phase of infrastructure upgrades,” City Administrator Cohl Turnquist said.

“The break disrupted service for the entire community, due to the failure of several valves surrounding the break, creating a scenario where staff was unable to isolate the break.”
Several of the malfunctioning valves will reportedly be replaced in the upcoming project this year.
The community was without water service for approximately 3 hours. Turnquist said that the outage was dramatically reduced however by the quick thinking and expertise of City staff, as they were able to identify the location of the leak prior to disrupting water service.
The break has been repaired and water service should be back at normal levels.