By Eleni Himaras, Staff Writer

Repairs have been completed on the large water main break that happened earlier this month at 2101 Walsh Tarlton Lane, and now all that’s left for the city to do is recover its losses from the responsible contractor. 

“Our pipeline operations group is currently pulling all the materials together – bills, materials used, invoices— everything related to this water main break that we incurred from very small to very large,” said Austin Water Utility spokesperson Jill Mayfield. “We are getting that organized with our finance department, they will be coming up with an invoice and providing that very soon to the contractor.”

On July 7, a contractor inadvertently drilled a four-inch hole into the 54-inch water main, losing five million gallons of water.

“We had to get a large contractor that had big enough equipment to dig that [seven-foot] hole,” Mayfield said. 

The city also had to hire contractors with specialized pumps and a specialized welder. They also plan to charge the contractor for costs related to traffic control, including  not only the cost of labor but food for the crew and lighting. 

“They’re trying to finalize that total,” Mayfield said. “Everything they had was just the estimate, which was several thousand dollars.”

The only customer to lose service during the break was the Chase Bank adjacent to the break.