It’s 4:30 p.m. downtown, rush hour just beginning, wind chill minus 30. The last thing a water utility needs now is a major line break.Yet that’s exactly what happened last January in Columbus, Ohio. A 24-inch water main popped, flooding about 10 city blocks. Water poured into basements. Worse yet, a nearby hospital faced possible evacuation of patients and staff. “We had a river flowing four ways at once in downtown Columbus,” recalls Mike Spriggs, water maintenance coordinator. “The water turned to ice. Locators were freezing up.”But it wasn’t the disaster it could have been. By 9 p.m., the Columbus
