‘It could have been horrible’: Troup reviews water main break, lauds Conte for professionalism in emergency

QUINCY — Director of Public Works Jeffrey Conte called the process “relatively simple” to repair a 24-inch main at the City of Quincy’s water treatment plant after an excavator hit it late Thursday afternoon.

He shook his head when asked to elaborate on what could have been.

“It could have been horrible,” he said. “It could have been a break in a very old pipe that’s a non-standard diameter that we don’t have parts for. We would have had to find someone in the country who had parts to fit it, and it could have taken a day or two (to deliver the part to Quincy). Remember, it happened on a Thursday night. If we couldn’t find a part locally, where are you going to get it from?

“It could have been much, much worse.”

Quincy Mayor Mike Troup used the first 15 minutes of Monday night’s Quincy City Council meeting to provide a review of what happened in the aftermath of Thursday’s break that led to a citywide boil order and decreased water pressure on the east end of the city. The work being done at the water treatment plant is part of $30 million in improvements to the City of Quincy’s water system, such as floodproofing and replacing water and sewer pipes.

Troup said city crews worked until the early-morning hours on Friday, and the water treatment plant was shut down. City officials asked citizens to conserve water usage.

“That’s the first group of people we need to thank because they absolutely conserved water,” Troup said. “Mainly turning sprinklers off, not washing the cars and whatever else, just being careful with what water they do use. That helped us.”

Troup said Conte called in Rees Construction, which had been contracted to handle the next phase of the renovation work, to learn where the pipe was damaged. Richards Electric was called in to protect a pump in case of localized flooding. Awerkamp Machine was asked to make the cap needed to repair the break.

“When the crews brought what we needed down to Awerkamp, they literally dropped everything else they were working on and did the repair for us,” Troup said. “I don’t know that they had it even an hour and got it back to us, and then our staff was able to install that cap. All three of those local businesses were extremely supportive.”

Troup explained the east side of the city lost water pressure at mid-day Friday because those homes and businesses are on higher ground.

“The pumps that would pump into the water tower and to the other services in that area did not have enough water that the pumps could continue to move the water,” he said. 

St. Dominic School, Rooney Elementary and Denman Elementary didn’t have water service by noon and sent students home early.

“It’s hard to have hundreds of elementary students in a school where the bathrooms don’t work, let alone the kitchen doesn’t have water,” Troup said. “They ended up getting early release. Those (the students) were probably only the few people in Quincy who were happy that this happened.”

Troup thanked the Quincy Police Department, the Quincy Fire Department, the Adams County Health Department, Adams County Emergency Management Services, Blessing Hospital, Quincy Medical Group and the Quincy Public Schools for their efforts.

“It’s the same group that was meeting weekly during COVID to just coordinate everything that was going on emergency-wise,” Troup said.

Troup said 25 water samples from throughout the community were collected and given to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, which tested them before giving the OK to lift the boil order.

Troup saved his final words to praise Conte.

“Our public works director did an unbelievable job in coordinating the Central Services staff, getting all the equipment, the outside contractors, everyone who we needed to take care of this problem and what could have been an extremely devastating event for Quincy, even though it created issues for a lot of our industries and residents,” he said. 

“It was short-lived, relatively speaking. Now, if you didn’t have water for eight hours, you could probably argue with me that it may not have been as short-lived as you would have liked, but we had nothing like the experience people had in Flint, Mich. (in 2014). I want to congratulate Jeffrey … for awesome work, professionalism and getting this problem corrected. Hopefully, we never have to go through that again. The Central Services crews that we have are as phenomenal as Jeffrey, and nobody was hesitant to do whatever was asked.”

Conte pointed out that the renovation work being done at the water treatment plant is intended to prevent a similar situation from cutting off the city’s water supply.

“We’re putting a bypass and putting in extra valves,” he said. “We’re putting in stuff that if something breaks in the future, we don’t have to shut all city down. It’s kind of ironic that it happened, but that’s what happened.”

Aldermen Greg Fletcher (R-1) and Kelly Mays (R-3) both asked for city officials to look at improving communication in future emergencies.

Mays said letting the public know was “a problem” and asked if the city had the capability of sending a citywide text in similar situations. Conte said City Treasurer Kelly Stupasky had looked into a plan that would allow the city to contact anyone who had provided a cellphone number.

“It kind of got put on the back burner, but we will bring it back to the front real quick,” Conte said.

“I want to reach out to the media,” Fletcher said at the end of the meeting. “They did a fantastic job of keeping us informed because it wasn’t for you guys. I wouldn’t have known nothing about it until about Friday at noon.”