Water Main Break Hits North End Street Again

BOSTON (CBS) - It has happened again. Work is underway to replace a water main in the North End that has broken twice in about a week. And people who live and work in the area are not happy about losing water service again. Boston water officials say this time, the fix should hold.

It's like a recurring nightmare on Richmond St. in the North End between Hanover and North streets. The 8-inch water main burst early Thursday morning. The same thing happened last week, sending water gushing and robbing residents and businesses of a service that's an absolute necessity.

Now the street is shut down as crews hustle to fix the problem. For Vinoteca di Monica, a restaurant on Richmond St., it's bad news. "We lost almost three days business, had to close a few days and definitely losing some money," said Matt Nagle who works for the restaurant.

"Understandably so, the frustration from the residents and the businesses there. We apologize for this," said Tom Bagley from the Boston Water and Sewer Commission.

He said instead of repairing the pipe as they did last week, they're going further this time. "Rather than continue to patch it here and there, we decided to replace a 100 foot section of the water line," Bagley explained.

Why did the pipe fail twice? It's still a mystery. The pipe is about 40 years old and should last a lot longer than that. So the Water Commission is sending a broken piece to a lab to figure out what happened.

"Hopefully they get it right this time, because we had the water off for a day and a half," said Craig Carpenter, who lives in the area. There are still a few customers without water, so crews are running temporary pipes to a few buildings to get the water flowing again.

The Water Commission expects to have the work done in the North End in 24 to 48 hours.