Leaky Pipe Deprives 1,000 of Water for Half a Day

A leaky pipe left about 1,000 Camrosa Water District customers without water for at least 12 hours early Monday in the Camarillo Springs and Mission Oaks areas of the city.

An alarm went out about 8 p.m. Sunday, signaling district operators that water pressure was lower than normal, said Richard Hajas, general manager.

“When that happens, especially in this hot weather, they’ll turn on more water to start up more pumps,” Hajas said. “They came in to do that and noticed it wasn’t improving very much.”

The water pressure then started gradually decreasing, indicating a leak in the system.

Operators had a difficult time locating the leak. It was finally spotted once the sun came up along Conejo Creek north of the Ventura Freeway bridge.

“We’ve had line breaks as bad as this occur someplace where someone notices it right away, so we can deal with it quickly,” Hajas said. “But in this case there was no road damage that would alert someone to a problem.”

About 6 a.m. Monday, Camrosa Water District customers began calling the district office to notify officials of the problem.

Although Eugene Pinto, a Camarillo Springs resident, missed his morning shower, he said, the water loss “was nothing that I couldn’t live with.”

Udon Jimenez, also from the Camarillo Springs area, was able to take a shower Monday morning--it just took a bit longer than usual.

“There was very little water trickling out,” Jimenez said. “But my neighbors weren’t even able to take a shower because they had zero water.”

Once operators located the leak, they isolated the pipe, brought in water from a different route and gave the system time to pressurize.

By noon Monday everything was back to normal, Hajas said.

“I don’t know what caused the leaks,” he said, adding that this portion of the line was part of the original installation in 1963.

“Typically, creek crossings are very weak points in a water system. It could be that past floods or earthquakes may have caused damage that we never saw.”