“We have averted a major disaster,” Jerry Johnson, general manager of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, said at noon Wednesday. “We are back to nearly business as usual.”
“We had no idea — not the least concept — that these guys were going to succeed, that they could get in and make this part in place,” he said. “It’s been unheard of.”
But some county officials said the possibility of repairing the valve issue been raised early on in their private discussions with the WSSC after it proposed the massive shut down.
“We kept saying, ‘There has got to be a better way,’ ” said a county official privy to the internal discussions.
WSSC spokeswoman Kira Calm Lewis said officials were astounded by the success and speed of the valve replacement.
“No one thought these guys were going to pull this off,” Lewis said. “It was literally extraordinary. What if they tried and it hadn’t worked? We’d be in the same situation but wouldn’t have told people they would have no water. Unfortunately, we had to prepare people for the situation we thought we could be in, not the situation that we hoped we’d be in.”
Johnson said the valve had been stuck in the open position for some time because the utility had a hard time finding replacement parts. The gears needed to close it were stripped, he said. But the two WSSC workers ground the gears down, moving them closer together so that the valve would turn again.
By late Tuesday, Johnson said, they were able to complete the 400 turns required to close it. That enabled a diversion of water from a 36-inch pipe that runs beneath the Capital Beltway, he said.
The water main had been described by the WSSC as the sole conduit for much of the southern and western parts of Prince George’s between Andrews and the Potomac River and from the border with the District to several miles south of the Capital Beltway.
Johnson said the water restrictions remain in effect in the area until the water main is repaired. He said they were necessary to ensure that the system maintains water pressure while the deteriorating pipe is taken out of service for repairs.
Johnson estimated that repairs would take closer to three days, rather than the five days originally projected.
Tallying the economic losses from the on-again off-again water crisis is difficult, but the effects were widespread.
Disappointed lunch-hunters poured into the parking lot of a shuttered McDonald’s off of Suitland Road on Wednesday afternoon after officials announced that they had found a solution.
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