Sewer line in Madera gets maintenance after second failure. How long until it’s replaced?
Residents of Madera this week were shocked when they were alerted to limit their water usage. Their sewer system had failed, again.
This time, it happened along Avenue 13, west of Granada Drive – not far from the scene of its last failure in January 2023.
The collapse of a 48-inch sewer line that occurred 20 feet underground Monday is getting a temporary fix with bypass pumps while crews replace the stretch of failed pipe at a preliminary cost of $260,000. But it could be next year before the city’s troubled main sewer line, which carries five tons of sewage daily, is fully rehabilitated.
“This is the only trunk line that is supplying sewage over to the wastewater treatment plant,” Madera City Councilmember Jose Rodriguez said during a special meeting Wednesday.
This main sewage canal uses gravity to transport all of the sewage coming from the city of about 66,000 residents to the plant.
Deputy city engineer Ellen Bitter said during the special meeting that high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide gas, which is emitted by the degradation of raw sewage, eat away at the concrete piping’s reinforcements.
“The gases actually eat away at the rebar and cause it to corrode, and it starts dropping into the pipe,” she said. “There are areas where you can see remains of rebar, like rust marks, but the rebar is gone.”
On Tuesday, Bitter said in a phone interview with The Fresno Bee that the collapse drew in the earth above the line, causing a sinkhole to appear in the road on Avenue 13.
The same line previously collapsed in January 2023 in an area close to the site of this week’s failure, costing $2.7 million in repairs that the city made a claim with FEMA for, citing catastrophic weather events as a cause. Bitter said during the Wednesday meeting that the city is still waiting to hear back from FEMA. (The city also had a sewer line collapse on Schnoor Avenue in 2016 that caused a sinkhole that was between 15-20 feet deep.)
“That was catastrophic ... and the costs were so high, obviously, because we had the issue with the railroad and the other pipelines that were involved,” Bitter said about the January 2023 collapse. “We’re fortunate in this one (Monday’s collapse) that it maintained the channel. The sewer could continue flowing, so we didn’t have the great backups that we could have had.”
She previously told The Bee that, because the channel was maintained, no sewage had leaked into the earth.
The city immediately brought in multiple contractors with crews that worked overnight earlier this week to install pumps that allow sewage to bypass the break in the line. Madera officials announced Wednesday morning that crews had stabilized the sewer system with the bypass pumps and alerted residents that they could return to regular water use, including long showers, dish-washing, watering their lawns or other activities that result in more water draining into the city’s sewer system.
In the meantime, the city is working to identify the extent of the damage to the line. On Wednesday, Bitter said that crews did not yet know the length of the collapse that needs emergency replacement.
To pay for the emergency repairs and bypass pumps, the city will be able to draw money from the state and federal dollars it has received for its $10 million complete rehabilitation project that will remedy 24,570 feet of its sewer lines, including pipes on Schnoor Avenue and on Avenue 13. Bitter said the cost for complete rehabilitation project is turning out to be lower than originally projected, which allows the city to draw funding to pay for the current emergency.
Bitter said the city had recently bid out contracts for the rehabilitation project and hopes to finalize with a firm this month. She said construction on that project is planned to start in July and could take between six and nine months to complete.
