BLANDFORD – Blandford Town Selectman and Water Commissioner William Levakis was forced to declare a state of emergency Monday after a water main froze and broke under the town’s North Street Bridge, leaving almost 20 families in the community without water and some without heat.
A challenging prospect for any community, but especially one as small as Blandford, a hilltown with a population of just over 1,200 that has relied on a supply truck from Connecticut to provide almost 6,000 gallons of drinking water this week.
Levakis said Friday that the town has been teaming up with local contractors and representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) this week to mend the broken pipe and restore water service to the impacted families and community members.
“It froze (President’s Day) and we tried to get help, but we couldn’t get much right away,” said Levakis from the site Friday.
“We’re getting really close to bringing it online now and everyone’s working really hard,” said Levakis. “We have all kinds of insulation for the pipe, putting in the last valves and cement, so it won’t be long now. Hopefully everything goes right.”
Levakis said that after the work is complete, workers will go door-to-door to make sure that the their water is running, adding that the temperatures he and the crews were subjected to were brutally cold, making it difficult to even speak.
“We’ve got all kinds of crews with the Blandford Water Department. (FEMA) is working well with us right now,” he said. “We’ve got contractors working that jumped right in on site right away.”
Levakis said that Bernard St. Martin, Blandford’s water superintendent, will be checking the line and then running tests on the water to make sure it is safe for consumption.
