Water system break awaits repair in Riverbank neighborhood

Repair is set to begin Thursday morning on a water break that’s sent a steady stream of water up through a street crack in the River Heights custom home community since Tuesday night.

A resident of the neighborhood said he first saw the rupture about 10 p.m. Tuesday, where Oakdale Road dead-ends into Park Ridge/Arrowhead Drive. Wednesday morning, two sawhorses were up to warn motorists of the break, and the water was running to a streetside drain about a tenth of a mile away.

Michael Riddell, Public Works superintendent for the city of Riverbank, said Wednesday that River Heights is a “gated” community (though there’s no actual gate) that is not part of the city water system and that the neighborhood’s security service already had contacted a contractor to make repairs.

Don Wood, owner of Modesto-based D.A. Wood Construction, said his company was contacted Wednesday morning about the break and will have a crew out to begin working on it Thursday morning.

The water system in the neighborhood is “so old and deteriorated” that the crew’s work will be exploratory, Wood said.

“It could be a valve, could be a fitting” – the crew won’t know until it begins digging, he said. In the meantime, “we cannot turn the water off,” he said, “because of chancing possible contamination of the system.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2015 at 1:25 PM with the headline "Water system break awaits repair in Riverbank neighborhood."