By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 14, 2006

A broken water main that disrupted service Sunday for thousands of people in Arlington County and the District was part of a $3 million replacement project and had just been turned on last month, officials said yesterday.

Having a new pipe fail is "very unusual," said Richard Norair, president of the Landover-based contractor, Norair Engineering Corp., that had installed it.

Norair was working with Arlington officials yesterday to determine what caused the breach. The pipe, part of a system that brings water to Arlington from the Dalecarlia Reservoir in Northwest Washington, burst about 2:30 p.m. Sunday, sending water cascading from under Chain Bridge and fouling traffic for hours.

Water service slowly returned to normal in thousands of homes in Arlington and the District yesterday. Most of Arlington's 200,000 residents had no water or low water pressure for several hours Sunday as public works officials worked to fix the problem. About 3,000 Northwest Washington residents and businesses were also affected.

An Arlington spokeswoman, Jennifer K. Smith, said that most homes and businesses had "nearly normal" pressure yesterday but that some households were still getting milky or clouded water as utilities workers continued to flush the system throughout the day. Calls to the county's water hotline had trickled off by noon, Smith said.

The county had advised residents to boil water as a precaution for part of the day Sunday but lifted the advisory about 10:30 p.m. after testing and consulting with state and local health officials.

John Mausert-Mooney, Arlington's director of utilities and environmental policy, said officials are investigating the cause of the burst. The pipe was part of a system that brings about 28 million gallons of water a day to the county from Dalecarlia, officials said. The water capacity has been increased on a second intake pipe that crosses the river to replace the supply from the downed pipe, officials said.

"We've eliminated nothing as a possible cause," Mausert-Mooney said. "We really don't want to prejudice the investigation. We're going to look at everything."

As Arlington tried to keep residents informed on its Web site and via its emergency e-mail message system, some residents said that on the other side of the river notification did not work as smoothly.

One Spring Valley resident who was without water for three hours said she waited 45 minutes on the telephone with the water agency Sunday and checked its Web site repeatedly for updates -- to no avail.

D.C. Water and Sewer Authority spokeswoman Michele Quander-Collins said some areas of Northwest had low water pressure "longer than anticipated," including a handful of homes around Wisconsin and Connecticut avenues where the problem was not fixed until yesterday morning. The authority issued a media advisory about 6 p.m. Sunday saying that there was no alert to boil water in the District because pressure had remained sufficient to prevent infiltration by contaminants, she said.