Du Quoin went to bed Tuesday night with two boil orders in effect.
The good news is, that as the new water main under Madison Street is installed and completed, this is likely the last time anyone will have this problem.
At about noon on Tuesday, water was shut off to Madison Street homes and businesses from Jackson Street to just before the Moto Mart, so crews could lay a new water main. Also included in the shut-off were homes and businesses on Mallory Lane, Orchard Lane, Van Buren, Jefferson Avenue and North and South Lake Drive, all of which hook into the Madison Street main. The boil order will likely be in effect for two or three days, until the water system is fully re-pressurized and water samples come back pristine from the labs.
"There's no way to do it without people losing water for a period of time," said City Clerk Andrew Croessman.
Boil orders are typically necessary whenever the system drops in pressure, he said.
He said once the contractors finish hooking up the new main, and transfer all the connections from the old main to the new one, they will re-pressurize the system and get the water flowing again. They'll shock the main with chlorine and then take water samples to the lab until the sample comes out clean. At that point, the boil order will be canceled.
"That old main had so many breaks so frequently," Croessman said. He said most homes and businesses using the Madison Street main won't notice much change, except the water supply will be much more reliable and maybe a little improvement in pressure.
"We've had complaints from the counseling center they had discolored water," Croessman said, "probably because they were at the end of the main."
Du Quoin, which gets its water from the Rend Lake system, is replacing outdated water mains when it has the funds to do so, he added.
"We are building up reserves right now, to go toward a point in the future where we can do replacements on a scheduled basis," he said.
A second boil order popped up Tuesday afternoon on the 400 block of North Maple, which Croessman assumes is a break that they'll have to put a clamp on.
Croessman said the old mains, many made of cast iron, are outdated well beyond their useful lives. The new mains are cheaper and hardier than the old ones -- and could expect to be working for 100 years.
The costliest parts of the replacement projects now aren't the actual materials, he said, but digging to avoid all the other underground utilities (fiber optic cable, gas lines, etc.), transferring all the connections to the new main and labor.
