Geyser Erupts in Downtown LG

A City water line on College Street near Tejas Healthcare broke Monday afternoon, which sent an impressive geyser of water shotting out of the ground for a few minutes.

“We’ve got some pretty good system pressure in that vicinity,” remarked La Grange City Manager Shawn Raborn.

Raborn said the geyser was caused by an old cast iron pipe that suddenly failed. He said the failure was not caused by the cold weather.

“Who knows why it happened,” Raborn said. “It’s a weird thing about old water lines, especially cast iron lines. They have to hold a lot of pressure, as you can see with that geyser, and someday they just crack.”

Raborn said the City located another big water leak Monday morning after noticing a drop in water pressure. That leak was in an eight-inch line in front of Cottonwood Inn on the west side of town. Raborn said the two leaks were not related. He said all of the water at Cottonwood leaked under the ground and did not produce any water on the surface.

“We don’t know when it happened, but it looks like sometime after noon (Sunday) and we caught it this morning,” Rabron said on Monday.

Both leaks were repaired on Monday. Neither caused any water outages for customers.

In related news, Raborn told the La Grange City Council at a meeting Monday night that the City will apply for a $300,000 Community Development Block Grant this year. If awarded, the funds would be used to upgrade some of the City’s old cast iron water pipes.