Untitled Document

Eagle Road water-pipe break fixed, traffic restored in just 48 hours

A water line break under Eagle Road flooded the highway just south of Fairview Avenue on Monday night. Just 48 hours later it had been dianosed, excavated, repaired, repaved, and traffic restored. This was both impressive and imperative, as it
is the most heavily traveled section of non-interstate highway in Idaho.

The water main broke late in the evening, and flooding and water erosion caused a half-mile section of the highway to be closed to all traffic. ITD crews immediately set up detours, notified the media, and began assessing the damage on Tuesday morning when the sun came up.

Meridian Public Works, the Meridian Police Department, the Ada County Highway District, L2 Excavators, Central Paving, and ITD worked together to safely divert traffic, perform emergency repairs to the pipe, and rebuild the road.

The repair work required a deep trench to be dug ten feet wide and 40 feet long to gain access to the broken pipe.

Once the pipe was fixed, ITD contractors began repairing the erosion damage and rebuilding 70 feet of the five-lane highway, including two entrances to nearby businesses.

That included backfilling the trench, removing broken asphalt, rebuilding the road base, repaving the highway, and restriping.

Dave Dansereau, District 3 Maintenance Coordinator, provided project oversight and quality control.

We reopened the highway to full traffic late Wednesday night, prior to the Thursday morning commute.

Thanks to great working relationships with local agencies, ITD kept the public informed about the emergency repairs to Idaho's busiest stretch of highway while keeping the work crews safe.

The costs of the emergency repairs will be paid by the city of Meridian.