ORANGE - City officials lifted a nearly 28-hour "boil water" advisory on March 19 and anticipate repairs to be made on or by March 27.
City Engineer and Director of Public Works Arlene Kemp said that two breaches in a 20-inch diameter main within South Mountain Reservation should be repaired and flushed by the end of this week.
"The 20-inch line and the 16-inch line that run mostly parallel to each other are made of iron," said Kemp of the two breaks. "They are fine when they are in a steady state but cracks can develop when a surge of water happens while it comes back on line. As of now, we're no longer using the East Orange Water Commission or New Jersey American Water transmission lines."
Kemp said that the Orange Reservoir's water level has been returning to its 21-foot depth and that the 16-inch line experienced no problems in serving the city's some 30,000 customers. The two lines run about 3.5 miles from six active wells in the Millburn part of the reservation to the Chestnut Street pumping station in the city's Valley section.
"The 20-inch line was laid in 1923 and the 16-inch line between 1870 and the 1880s," said Kemp. "Both lines have several interconnections so we can move water from one to the other. We're pleased that the 16-inch line handled the capacity well."
The crack was discovered while DPW workers were about to finish repairing a hole at another point along the 20-inch line. The hole, detected on March 17, was what prompted Kemp, Mayor Eldridge Hawkins, Jr., City Administrator John Mason and Health Officer Vincent DeFilippo to immediately issue the water use advisory.
Hawkins and Kemp said that the water advisory was lifted 4:30 p.m. when New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection tests showed that the water met potable - or drinkable - quality standards.
"Our advisories went out in two stages," said Hawkins. "When the problem occurred, we put a bulletin out on our Web site and reverse 911 line and had notices given out by our staff to businesses, senior citizen centers and other places. When the tests came back 4:30 p.m. Friday, we put out the boil water advisory."
Hawkins, Kemp and Mason explained that the first bulletin urged customers to limit their water use. Mason said that the voluntary restriction was to minimize any possible infiltration of contamination rather than concern for water pressure.
"The DEP tests showed that we were well within e coli and fecal chloroform levels," added Kemp. "We then got the word out Friday night with the help of our DPW employees and (OFD) firefighters."
Orange has been drawing water from the South Mountain Reservation watershed since after the Civil War. The then-Orange Township first bought the Rahway River West Branch's banks in 1882 and dammed the stream in two places to create the reservoir and Campbell's Pond.
Orange later drilled wells further south between the 1890s and 1967 but had to negotiate with the Essex County Park System. The nation's oldest county parks department had created the reservation from some 2,047 acres in West Orange, South Orange, Maplewood and Millburn in 1895.
Kemp said that the 20-inch break was found near the well field. Repairing included notifying the DEP, taking water test samples and flushing the repaired line.
The director/engineer said that the crack, found under Millburn's Glen Avenue Bridge near Campell's Pond, complicated repairs.
"The line was running parallel to East Orange and New Jersey American's water line, a natural gas line and an electrical power line," said Kemp. "We had to notify each of the utilities before repairs."
Both Kemp and Hawkins explained that neither the Orange Reservoir nor Campbell's Pond have been the city's potable water sources for up to seven decades. The reservoir alone had supplied 19 percent of city customer demand as late as the 1980s.
"We stopped using the reservoir and Campbell's Pond before I got here," said Kemp. "My guess for Campbell's Pond is the 1930s. The reservoir was decommissioned five or six years ago."
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