Steamboat Pilot & Today

About 10 p.m. Monday, Yampa Mayor Tom Estes noticed a lack of water pressure coming from the faucet at his home. Eight hours later, he found himself in the bottom of a ditch fixing the problem himself.

Yampa residents lost water pressure when their only water main broke, closing Yampa Elementary School and sending the majority of the town's drinking water to the ground's surface about a half-mile down Routt County Road 7.

Officials did not know why the cast-iron pipe ruptured. Councilman William Northrup, who helped find and fix the problem, said the section of water line was only 10 years old.

When Estes realized the problem, he called a group of residents to look for the water leak, hoping they would spot water flowing upward out of the snow.

A group including Northrop, Yampa Public Works assistant Greg Samuelson, former Public Works Director Tom Yackey and general contractor Rob Nielson spent much of the night searching for the leak. They found it at about 5 a.m.

Moments later, Nielson had a backhoe digging at the site. After shutting off the water, the group dug meticulously around the pipe and cut away the damaged section. They had a new piece cut and were installing it at about noon Tuesday.

"We'll have this knocked out in about half an hour," Estes said at the time.

He said the town has the tools needed to fix such problems, and he doesn't mind doing it himself because it saves the town money, and "it's no big deal."

Even before Monday night's water-main break, the town council had been looking into measures to prevent water problems in the future, Northrop said.

"Yampa is now involved in researching trying to put a new line and storage tank in the town," he said. "At this time, we're trying to purchase some property and install a whole new line."

If a new and larger water main is installed, the old line would still flow as well, Northrop said.

"We would have two lines, with a check valve on the tank where, if for some reason the line blew out, the check valve would close, and the town would get water from the reserve tank," Northrop said.