Divers stabilizing Melbourne Causeway underwater pipe exposed by Hurricane Irma's currents

Cocoa learned the hard way: After city officials failed to shore up exposed underwater pipes along State Road 520, Hurricane Irma's swift currents knocked out the drinking water supply for nearly 300,000 people, including surrounding mainland and beachside communities.

Melbourne wants to avoid a similar fate. After Irma lashed the Space Coast — and Cocoa's woes became apparent — the city dispatched divers to the Indian River Lagoon to check the 20-inch water main beneath the Melbourne Causeway.

What did the divers discover? About 260 feet of undermined, stressed pipe — nearly a football field’s worth — were left in "an imminent failure condition” after Irma, according to a November inspection report.

Now, in an emergency $315,000 underwater repair job, divers are stabilizing these sections of cast-iron water line beneath the Melbourne Causeway that were exposed from the river bottom.

"Hurricane Irma and what happened with the city of Cocoa prompted the city to request the November 2017 inspection," said Jennifer Spagnoli, Melbourne utilities engineer.

More:Mayor slams media coverage of Cocoa water system

The Melbourne Causeway water main is a vital link in Melbourne's network that supplies drinking water across roughly 100 square miles of southern Brevard County. Melbourne supplies drinking water for about 150,000 people, serving 53,259 residential and multi-family accounts and 5,110 commercial accounts.

Communities include Melbourne, West Melbourne, Melbourne Beach, Indialantic, Indian Harbour Beach, Satellite Beach, Palm Shores, Melbourne Village and nearby unincorporated Brevard County. 

Logan Diving & Salvage, a Jacksonville commercial diving firm, is using Front Street Park as a staging area during Melbourne's pipe repair project.

More:Cocoa Water: How the system came undone

Divers are positioning 60-pound bags of cement — roughly 240 pallets in all — below, around and atop exposed pipe in pyramid-type fashion. This cement hardens into a protective shell.

Work began Jan. 3. The four-week project is not quite halfway done, Spagnoli said, since last week’s windy conditions slowed work.

“But they have put piers under every location where there was an exposed pipe. At this point in time, there’s no longer any suspended pipe,” Spagnoli said.

The 2,500-foot Melbourne Causeway water line was installed about 1958, Spagnoli said. About nine years later, the city installed a second, 9,000-foot underwater pipe extending from Avenue B to near Paradise Boulevard in beachside Melbourne.

More:After Irma: Ambitious plans in Cocoa to develop riverfront

A third underwater crossing to the barrier island along the Pineda Causeway is in the design stage, Spagnoli said. Crews would install this new water line using directional drilling to place it deep beneath the river bottom.

On Wednesday afternoon, two Logan Diving & Salvage flat-bottomed boats tied up beneath the eastbound span of the Melbourne Causeway, toward the Indialantic side of the river.

A diver donned a chrome helmet reminiscent of a “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” costume prop, then descended a ladder and disappeared into the murky water. One of the crew hands unraveled and extended a hose to provide the diver’s oxygen supply.

In Cocoa, emergency repairs are complete at the SR 520 water main, said Samantha Senger, city spokeswoman. Logan Diving & Salvage still has work to finish shoring up the water line, and project cost to date is $1.1 million.

More:Feds could have sped up permit, but Cocoa deemed exposed pipe that failed in Irma 'not critical'

During Irma, soil eroding from Cocoa’s water lines along the mainland caused the pipes to move and break. Fallen trees accounted for a third of water main breaks, city officials said.

But the key SR 520 line break that caused pressure loss in the city's water system was known to have exposed areas as far back as 2012.

Logan Diving & Salvage found during inspections of Cocoa's underwater pipes in 2012, 2015 and 2016 that portions which had the sediment on top — and in one case underneath — eroded away, exposing the pipes to elements. The pipes should be buried for maximum protection.

Cocoa officials say they recognized that repairs were needed, but stressed in interviews and in internal documents that there was no indication any of the pipe along SR 520 or elsewhere would fail. The city felt it was on top of the problem, and in March 2017 had filed for a permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to shore up the lines. The Corps issued the permit in July, and Logan Diving & Salvage was ready to fortify the pipe when Irma struck.

The exposed underwater pipes first came to light in 2012 during repairs to a 6-inch outlet off the 3-foot wide water transmission main in the lagoon, city officials said. Some segments of pipe close to shore were partially exposed. But given that there hadn't been problems with the underwater water mains over the past 60 years, the uncovered pipes were deemed "important to address but not critical," city officials said. 

When divers checked the lagoon pipes between December 2015 and March 2016, the undermining and exposure of the underwater lines — along SR 520, State Road 528 under the lagoon and Banana River, and the crossing at State Road 401 — were not deemed "an immediate threat," city officials said.

Cocoa officials insisted they did everything they could before, during and after Irma to guard and/or restore the water supply.

A timeline of Melbourne events: Spagnoli said crews surveyed the Melbourne Causeway waterline in 2000 while bridge repair work was underway, but “there hasn’t been the technology to do a whole lot, up until recently.”

In 2015, a subaqueous waterline at Tortoise Island got struck, most likely by a boat anchor — somebody spotted bubbling water and notified the city. The city hired Logan Diving & Salvage to perform emergency repairs. Afterward, public works officials decided to hire Land & Sea Surveying Concepts, a Merritt Island company, to inspect the entire underwater system.

More:Gabordi: Looking for answers - not war - on Cocoa water failure

During that February 2016 pipe inspection, Land & Sea Surveying Concepts used divers, side-scan sonar and a marine magnetometer to survey five subaqueous crossings: the Melbourne Causeway, Avenue B, Front Street (a 12-inch cast-iron pipe extending 500 feet) and Tortoise Island (two 8-inch PVC pipes totaling 200 feet).

The survey revealed a couple of sections of exposed pipe beneath the causeway, but the pipe was not undermined.

Then Irma struck last September, accompanied by record-breaking rainfall and flooding.

“Normally, the velocity in the Indian River Lagoon is not very high. Water moves, but it doesn’t move very fast. During the storm, there may have been some areas where water’s trying to move through faster,” Spagnoli said.

On Oct. 30, City Manager Mike McNees approved an emergency post-hurricane inspection of the Melbourne Causeway water line. Logan Diving & Salvage divers went underwater. And in a Nov. 9 memo, Superintendent Joe Busuttil warned that "current suspended sections of pipe are in an imminent failure condition.”

"There’s one area where there’s 3 feet below the pipe with no material. This pipe is ball-and-socket river pipe. And when it was installed, it was expected to be laid down on the bottom of the river. And it does not have joint restraints that we would have today. So it’s not something that staff wants to wait on,” Spagnoli told the Melbourne City Council on Nov. 28.

Council members unanimously approved the $315,000 emergency repair project.

“I think this is a good project, for sure. We don’t want the Indialantic folks driving their boats over here wanting water,” Mayor Kathy Meehan said.

Councilman Paul Alfrey agreed.

“From our staff, good work on this preventative maintenance. We don’t want this thing to rupture,” Alfrey said.

Melbourne officials applied for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit on Nov. 17, and the permit was issued on Dec. 7, said Cheryl Mall, city spokeswoman.

Looking forward post-Irma, Spagnoli said Melbourne’s public works department will budget for annual underwater pipe surveys. These surveys may cost $30,000 to $50,000.

“We just don’t know when we’re going to have a storm or not have a storm. And it’s best to know if we have an issue, especially after things that have happened from this storm,” Spagnoli said.

Contact South Brevard Watchdog Reporter Rick Neale at 321-242-3638, rneale@floridatoday.com or follow @RickNeale1 on Twitter.