ROCKPORT — The men showing up well after dark to fix a ruptured water pipe in Rockport were not sure what caused the leak, but they were prepared for a full night of work. Six hours and more than 58,000 gallons of released water later, they patched up and went home; but in the process, they saved the integrity of a road, and avoided a major water utility headache for Camden residents — most of whom slept through it all.

The call came courtesy of Ron Howard, who oversees Aldermere Farm and the home of the Belted Galloways. He notified Knox County Regional Communications Center (emergency dispatch) at approximately 7:40 p.m., July 15, as he noticed water bubbling up through the pavement cracks just before the turn into his driveway. Across the street lay a field of dozing Belties.

Ten feet beneath the road, however, all was not quiet. A cast iron pipe that had been laid more than 100 years prior to connect Rockport and Camden had busted a hole,  and with rapidly building intensity, leaking water was filling the ground below and compromising the stability of the road.

Rockport Police Officer Robert Shaw was first at the site, laying traffic cones around the growing cracks and directing cars to the side of the road. Soon, trucks and trailers carrying Maine Water heavy equipment pulled up alongside.

The pipe had originally been laid along Russell Ave. by the Black family to service summer homes on Beauchamp Point in Rockport, and Dillingham Point, in Camden. While not right next to the shore, the eight-inch-diameter pipe rested on a bed of cobblestones in a bank of heavy clay, the ocean not far away.

How it busted, however, remains an unknown.

“Land is always moving back toward the water,” said Maine Water’s Shaun McNulty, who helps maintain the 250-miles of water pipes that run through the region. Slowly, and over time, parts of the system have become part of the general coastal erosion. A sudden shift below might have created a hairline fracture on the brittle pipe, which grew.

“This is another great mystery of the water utility universe,” said Maine Water Vice President Rick Knowlton. “We cannot point to the storm or any other reason for the break.”

The leak can, however, be attributed to the general deterioration of infrastructure built more than a century ago.

“It’s all about that,” said Knowlton. “This is another one of those realities of of the old pipe systems.”

While four months earlier a Rockport water main break was attributed to a sudden flash of winter storm lightning, this time, the heavy rain and powerful summer thunderstorm had yet to strike. That came later, just before 2 a.m. when the crew had finished repairing the pipe and filling the hole.

Maine Water, the public utility that delivers water along 250 miles of pipes through Camden, Owls Head, Rockport, Rockland, Thomaston, Union and parts of Warren, is now addressing the aging infrastructure — a constant and common challenge facing the next generation of water utility managers, according to Knowlton.

“For the last 20 years, we have concentrated on changes to the treatment and quality of water,” he said.  “The next 20 years, we will need to focus on the quality of piping, the infrastructure.”

It is expensive, he said. Where the original cast iron main that runs down the hills from Mirror Lake, Rockport, toward downtown Camden once cost approximately $1 to $2 a foot, its replacement, with ductile iron, will cost $120 to $150 per foot. Add the cost of digging and repaving after replacing a water main, and the average cost for such a project in New England is almost $1 million per mile, he said.

Into the night July 15, the Maine Water crew was kept company by Rockport Public Works Director Mike Young and former director Steve Beveridge. Both of them remained on the site until 2 a.m., helping remove dirt to a Rockport site, and then helping to patch the town-maintained road for morning traffic.

In the hole, the Maine Water men dug with shovels around the leak, then sawed out a one-foot section of the compromised pipe, and patched it with a new section. The crew worked with hand signals, a few words and smiles, but mostly, they knew exactly what the job required. As a team, they had it down.

Russell Ave. has been topped periodically with new layers of asphalt since it was first paved 25 years ago. Prior to that, it was a hard-packed dirt road. It is that thickness of the pavement — almost eight inches now of layered asphalt — that helped to keep the road stable, said Young.

Came morning, and little was evident of the earthworks the night before. A patch of asphalt, dirt runoff into the field, and some heavy track marks. And for the time being, the water main holds.

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