One part of a 150,000-gallon water leak in the village water system has been identified to be coming from a pipe on Cazenovia school property, causing the board of education on March 10 to approve an emergency repair project at a cost of about $60,000.

The water main break, located under the small employee parking lot adjacent to Emory Avenue, is estimated to be leaking up to 30,000 gallons a day, most of which is running into the village sewer system.

“This is something we need to address immediately,” Bill Furlong, assistant superintendent, told the school board during its March 10 work session.

The village department of public works has been investigating the gradual increase in water usage – and probable leak(s) — for the past month, although the actual source of the leaks were only identified recently, said DPW Director Bill Carr. Carr had previously reported to the village board at its March 3 meeting that he knew there were leaks in the system but not where they were occurring.

The village had New York Rural Water come in with listening devices three weeks ago but they could not find the leak, he said. After that, the village asked New York Leak Detection to investigate with its higher-powered equipment, and they found five leaks in the system, including the Emory Avenue leak. The biggest leak was on Burton Street, which the public works department has already fixed, Carr said.

The Emory Avenue leak is in the same spot as a previous leak that caused a two-day school closing at the beginning of the 2012-13 school year, Furlong said.

Because the leak is on school property is the district’s responsibility to fix it, although the village is cooperating and participating in the fix by offering to incur some of the cost and have its DPW crews do the digging to unearth the pipes, said Superintendent Bob Dubik.

The school board unanimously approved the emergency repair project, which means crews will access the pipe and put a temporary wraparound patch on it the weekend of March 22 and install a brand new water main during the district’s April recess.

Repairing and replacing existing district water lines was earmarked as part of the district’s recently approved $7.4 million capital project. Because this must be addressed immediately, however, the district must pay for the work separate from the capital project funding, Furlong said.

The job is estimated to cost $60,000, but the state education department will reimburse the district 75 percent of the cost, as it does for all other building expenses, which means the total cost to the district will be about $15,000, Furlong said.

The one positive note to this circumstance is that the $60,000 expected to be used in the capital project for water line repair and replacement is now free to be used for other capital projects, such as one of the alternate projects identified in the plan, Furlong said.

Carr said that village residents will not see any increase in their water bills due to the repair costs, since such funding is already built in to the DPW budget.

Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican He can be reached at [email protected].