Restorations hampered by weather and high number of main breaks

The month of January was a challenge for Louisville Water crews. With 238 main breaks reported, the crews did not have time to restore yards, streets and sidewalks that might have been damaged from the breaks and repairs.

“MDOL [Managing Distribution Operations and Logistics] attempts to leave every site restored; however, with the recent high main break activity and need for areas to dry out, we have a substantial yard restoration backlog,” explained Greg Armenta, Manager of Distribution Logistics at Louisville Water. “Currently, we have over 100 locations that need to be restored. These are split nearly evenly between work requiring a backhoe and smaller sites to be restored by our Senior Laborer, Alice Nuener.”

Nuener’s daily assignments are performing clean ups, posting no-parking signs and picking up barricades. “With the heavy workload, we’ve been trying to keep a general laborer with her for assistance,” said Armenta.

And the rain and high flood waters in February haven’t helped either. Armenta also said they use a restoration vendor when the backlog gets this high.

“The vendor was assigned about 25 percent of our clean up related work orders,” said Armenta. “We hope to get our restoration numbers back to normal soon. However, the recent heavy rains continue to delay our activities.”

Louisville Water’s street, driveway and sidewalk repairs are done mainly by contractors. Two employees, Senior Surface Repair Leaders George Reed and Leroy Hood, operate Louisville Water’s concrete trucks. Normally, they handle two to three sidewalk pours a week.

“The majority of their work is pouring bases after repairs to make the roads safe and prepare them for the contractor to finish the surface,” said Brandon Drake, Supervisor – Operations I for Louisville Water. “All Terrain Paving is our contractor for used for repairs to concrete sidewalks and driveways.”

Reid Brothers is the contractor used for asphalt street and driveway paving. The cold weather and additional work has them behind on current street repairs.

“They were unable to get asphalt during the extremely cold temperatures so they were unable to keep on track with the jobs Louisville Water was completing,” said Drake. “With good weather, they are able to get up to 10 patches per day completed, depending on size.”