Walnut Creek water main break snarls traffic with 2nd day of EBMUD repair work

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. (KGO) — Traffic has been backed up along a stretch of Walnut Creek since Thursday afternoon due to a water main break.

A water main break around 2:45 p.m. Thursday has shut down lanes in both directions on Ygnacio Valley Road near Homestead Avenue, and it’s creating a traffic nightmare.

“It usually takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to get home, and I’ve been sitting in traffic for about an hour and a half,” one commuter said. “It’s a bummer, but it is what it is. There’s nothing that you can do but listen to good music and sing along.”

An office building remained without water Friday morning, and lanes were still reduced. Water could be seen leaking on the street.

Repairs are underway, but completion is unlikely until Saturday morning, the East Bay Municipal Utility District said.

Just next to the drivers moving through traffic, crews worked through a large opening in the road to reach the break and make painstaking repairs.

“It’s an amazing thing that they did throughout the evening and a cold, chilly morning like this,” East Bay Municipal Utility District Spokesperson Joe Voelker said.

The break is on a 16-inch steel transmission line from 1955. Voelker said in order to repair the water main, crews first had to identify where the leak was coming from.

“And also work with any underground utilities that are under there and make sure that we can get around them and repair the lake,” he said. “So it’s an involved process, and an intersection like this with just a lot of the infrastructure that’s in this intersection, with stop lights and crosswalks and things along, as well as other ground, other buried utilities.”

The cause of the water main break is still under investigation.