Crews complete repairs to cracked sewage pipe

Crews finished repairing a broken force main at the city’s West Beach Wastewater Pump Station in Ko Olina on Friday morning after it cracked Wednesday afternoon, causing raw sewage to trickle on the ground for a few hours.

Repairs were completed at 2:30 a.m. Friday by a contractor hired by the city, and crews turned the pipe on 30 minutes later. The main was also tested for one hour, according to the city Department of Environmental Services.

The 3- to 4-foot-long crack in the force main, a pressurized pipe, caused by external corrosion was reported Wednesday, prompting the city to ask Ko Olina residents and businesses to conserve water until repairs were completed. The crack caused an estimated 1,000 gallons of raw sewage to spill on the ground at the station, Environmental Services Director Lori Kahikina said Thursday. But she said no sewage spilled into the ocean and that the main is in an area generally not accessible to the public.

Crews were able to contain the spill and used a tanker and cesspool trucks to capture as much of the flow upstream and redistribute it downstream, working for more than 30 hours. Kahikina said the main is about 25 years old, pointing out that the typical life span for mains is 30 to 40 years.

In January 2013 a sewer pipe at the pump station broke due to corrosion. Kahikina said the corrosion was limited to an isolated part of the pipe that has been replaced. It is not known at this point whether this week’s main break is linked to the 2013 corrosion, the department said.