A water main broke on Plymouth Road during construction on the road Sept. 8, affecting traffic and washing sand and mud into Traver Creek.

When a water main breaks, it's a big deal. Creeks, roadways, streets and rivers downstream are subjected to a sudden and unexpected flow of water that is usually full of some amount of sand, silt, dirt and mud. Residents and businesses on the affected main lose water pressure, which can force them to shut down or to have to boil their water to protect themselves from water contamination.

When a water main breaks, it hasn't always been easy to find out details about it. To really understand the consequences, you have to be able to make sense of multiple, overlapping layers of responsibility and authority. At the physical layer, pipes need to be repaired or replaced, but that's the least of it. Every system that consumes or conveys water nearby is put under a lot of stress, and people may need to scramble to protect their businesses and basements from the unexpected deluge.

Follow the creek

The creek is Traver Creek, which is hidden away. To follow it, take Jones Drive from Broadway Street, then cross Plymouth Road and the railroad tracks to Traver Street. Follow Traver to the northeast.

Along the way, there are several parks and crossings. Plymouth Parkway Park follows the creek, with a bike path, playground, and summertime black raspberries to pick in a narrow stretch sandwiched between Plymouth Road and the creek. The creek goes under Plymouth Road and Barton Drive, then runs along the Traver Knoll Apartments, which has several pedestrian and automobile bridges to cross it. It heads further upstream.

Links:

• Traver Creek City of Ann Arbor "State of our Environment," 2007.
  
• Plymouth Parkway Park, City of Ann Arbor.
  
• Middle Huron, Huron River Watershed Council
  
• Ann Arbor Township, Section 21, 1874 shows the path of Traver Creek before Plymouth Road was put in.
  
• Traver Knoll Apartments, managed by First Holding Management Co. LLC in West Bloomfield.
  

Follow the highway

Plymouth Road is the new highway, if by "new" you mean old. It was once one of the main routes from Ann Arbor to Detroit. Up to 1957, the road was called US-12; when US-12 was routed to the south along the southern freeways of Ann Arbor, it was renamed as M-14. The last part of the expressway was put in in 1979, and the stretch of M-14 that ran along Plymouth Road and Beakes was turned back to a city street in 1964.

Plymouth Road does not show up on the 1874 plat map; it was built on top of an old mill pond along Traver Creek that once provided power for the Northern Brewery, located on adjacent Jones Drive. I don't have a date for when the road was first put in, or for when the mill pond was drained.

Links:

• M-14, Michigan Highways, an encyclopedia of Michigan road construction written and edited by Chris Bessert
• US-12, Michigan Highways

Follow the route of the water main break

With those two maps as context, we have some way to tell a story of two water main breaks that happened along Plymouth Road.

A water main carries water along Plymouth Road. It is made of cast iron, a material used as piping for water up until the 1970s or 1980s when it was replaced by pipes made from ductile iron. Cast iron has the advantage of being in continuous use in the field since piping was laid in the palaces of Versailles, but it is relatively brittle compared to ductile iron, which has a bit more give to it.

There is work going on on Plymouth Road, which will replace this old main with a new one.

Two failures of the old pipe have occurred. In one case, the pipe burst unexpectedly, on a stretch of Plymouth Road just south of of the mall. In the second case, a construction crew hit the pipe in the course of doing the work on the road. In both cases, water spewed from the pipe over the road.

Impact downstream in the storm system

A broken water main can create a lot of water for the storm system to handle. In this case, the drains on Plymouth Road drain to Traver Creek, which is not visible from the road but which is close by. In addition to carrying the water from the freshwater supply system, they are also carrying sand, silt, gravel, and mud from the construction site. The materials visible from the road are very sandy.

Traver Creek gets a load of dirty water dumped into it all at once. The carrying capacity of Traver Creek is finite - it goes along a channel that isn't very wide - and some of that water and mud spills into adjacent properties, including some of the Traver Creek apartments. It's as though there was a 100-year storm in exactly one place, dumping a huge amount of water into a single location.

Impact upstream in the freshwater system

A broken water main means that businesses which rely on fresh water are unable to stay open, due to health and safety concerns.

In the first water main break, Biggby Coffee was closed for a day and a half, according to store supervisor Chris Bacon. Workers at nearby No Thai! and Famous Hamburger came next door to notify them of low water pressure, and they shut down promptly.

Links:

• Biggby Coffee
• Famous Hamburger
• No Thai!

Who are you going to call?

I am unable to find any record that the City of Ann Arbor's CodeRED system was put into use for notification of water main breaks. CodeRED is capable of making many automated phone calls to notify citizens of information which they must act on now.

On the date of the Sept. 8 water main break, there was no public news release on the City of Ann Arbor site regarding the situation. The University of Michigan did circulate news which it had received from the city on the issue, and I received a copy of it third or fourth-hand through some mailing lists I'm on.

I can't make a list of every possible way that you might find out about a water main break. Certainly, if water is flowing over the street and all of the traffic is stopped, people want to know what's up. After all the mud has been cleaned up, people want to know who is going to pay for all of the damages.

Links:

• CodeRED, City of Ann Arbor: "The City of Ann Arbor has the CodeREDâ„¢ Emergency Telephone Calling System for mass emergency notifications to notify residents and businesses within minutes of an emergency or a potential hazard. The system will call each number and will leave messages on answering machines and cell phones. Register today!"
• Filing a claim against the city, City of Ann Arbor
• Board of Insurance Administration, City of Ann Arbor

Edward Vielmetti has muddy sneakers for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.