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SALT LAKE CITY — Road crews worked to repair damage from a water main break in Salt Lake City Thursday morning.
Salt Lake City Public Utility said the area near 1000 North and 1200 West will be closed all day as crews work to repair the broken 12-inch line on 1000 North.
A driver reported the road buckling around 1:15 a.m. Crews found thousands of gallons of water pushing up the pavement.
"We had about a 12-by-12 foot area that had been pushed up in the center of the roadway," a Salt Lake City firefighter said. "The water was undercutting the structure of the road itself."
No homes were flooded but crews shut off the water to three houses. Nearby Rose Park Elementary School is not impacted.
Commuters are asked to avoid the area, and nearby bus routes may be detoured.
Salt Lake City alone has thirteen hundred miles of piping under the city and the oldest water infrastructure in the state, according to Jeff NierMeyer, the public utilities director for Salt Lake City.
"We try to replace an average of 10 miles of pipe a year, but we want to make sure we're replacing the pipes that give us the highest return for the dollars invested," Niermeyer said.
There are about 350 water main breaks on average in Salt Lake City that occur each year, according to city data.
During the last five months there have been at least four major breaks on central roadways, stretching from Brigham City to Sandy.
The cause of Thursday's break in Salt Lake has yet to be determined.
