Broken sewer line creates stinky mess in Fresno. What’s the link to high-speed rail work?
A large sewer line near the Union Pacific Railroad tracks through central Fresno suffered a collapse late Friday, causing sewage to back up into some homes and forcing city crews to pump sewage into trucks to get around the broken section of pipe.
The break in the system was reported about 9 p.m. along Weber Avenue between McKinley and Olive avenues. The 42-inch sewer line, one of several that move wastewater from east to west under the freight railroad tracks, is in an area near where utility relocation work is being carried out by contractors working on the California high-speed rail project, said Brock Buche, director of public utilities for the city of Fresno.
“There’s a lot of construction going on out here for high-speed rail,” Buche told The Fresno Bee on Saturday morning. “Last night, as construction was going on, this old sewer line collapsed and caused a sinkhole.” That forced sewage to start backing up within the pipeline.
Buche added that the pipeline was old and due to be replaced as part of the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s utility relocation work.
The sinkhole formed adjacent to the UPRR tracks near Weber and Brooks avenues. Trains continued to move along the line through the night and into Saturday, but only using two of the sets of tracks through the area and avoiding the tracks nearest the sinkhole as a precaution, Buche added.
Toni Tinoco, the high-speed rail authority’s Central Valley deputy director, said that while the agency’s contractors have been doing utility work in the vicinity, “we had not gotten to that point” where the sewer line break occurred.
“That’s an aging, older line that we had to relocate anyway and were going to replace,” Tinoco added. “But it was not necessarily damaged by our contractor. … We understand that it has failed previously” in the past because of its age.
The unpleasant fragrance of raw sewage was carried through the area on occasional puffs of breeze Saturday morning, leaving little doubt about the kind of utility pipeline that was damaged. At least two households were relocated by the city to hotels because of sewage backing up into their homes, Buche reported, and Weber Avenue remained closed Saturday morning between McKinley and Olive avenues as crews worked on the problems.
Several large pumping trucks were being used to pump sewage from manholes on the east side of the UPRR tracks and hauling the material to an undamaged part of the sewer system on the west side of the tracks, Buche said. Workers also were installing a small, temporary 6-inch line as an additional measure to keep waste flowing.
He added there are other main lines to the north and south to which crews were working to divert the flow, and that another old unused utility pipe might also be used as a replacement until a more permanent solution was put in place. “That’s something we’re studying closely,” Buche said. “We’re diverting what we can to different locations and pumping what we have to.”
Buche said it was not known how long the stretch of Weber would be closed or how long it would take to restore full service around the damaged sewer line. “It’s a very dynamic situation,” he said.
Tinoco said rail agency representatives and contractors were on site Saturday working with the city on providing a work-around that could be in place by Tuesday.
This story was originally published May 6, 2023 at 10:50 AM.
