GLENDALE, Mo. – Missouri American Water crews were called to repair a 6-inch water main break Thursday morning off Sappington Road in Glendale, shutting down a portion of the road.

“I do know that on Glendale right now crews are already in the stages of repairing the break,” Christie Barnhart, the senior communications manager with Missouri American Water, said. “So, usually, once they are at that point, we estimate repair time to be about eight hours.”

Even though these breaks will likely occur with more frequency in the coming weeks, numbers are down from last year.

“Now, the good news is so far for the month of January, we’ve been trending down, meaning that as of right now, we’ve repaired about 135 water main breaks. And at the end of January last year, we were at 447,” Barnhart said.

Snow cover can help by acting as an insulator for the water mains but ultimately the freeze and thaw cycles are challenging.

“Where we see things really start to get problematic is when the water temperature hits around 37 degrees. Earlier in the week, it was holding steady at 40. So, that’s definitely something that can raise, you know, the amount of main breaks that we see,” Barnhart said.

“And then, of course, when you have temperatures that fluctuate and go up and down and you have the freeze and the thaw as you mentioned, that can cause a shift in the ground, which can create tension on our pipes, which can cause them to break.”

Barnhart says the most important thing customers can do is sign up for alert notifications on their website and that it’s not a bad idea to fill a milk carton up with water to keep in the refrigerator just as a precaution.

“A majority of our main breaks do not result in any kind of a precautionary advisory,” she said. “Those are launched when we see a reduction in pressure in the system, and those are things that we notify our customers of immediately.”