By Seaborn Larson
Billings Gazette, Mont.
BILLINGS, Mont. — If the catastrophic water system failure at Montana State Prison had occurred much earlier in the year, it’s likely many of the resources crawling around the area would have been committed toward firefighting efforts elsewhere, maybe even out of state.
Had it come a few weeks later, the hardening ground would have presented workers with yet another complication.
“You wouldn’t see these resources in the middle of summer,” said Ed Greiberis with the Montana Department of Emergency Services , who is acting as a liaison between the bloc of government agencies alloyed around the water system failure at the state prison, which holds 1,600 inmates. “Resources go to the places with the most people.”
The situation at the state prison outside of Deer Lodge has settled into a sort of frenetic rhythm since underground water pipes began fracturing here over a week ago.
Mobile showers have been brought in on trucks and erected in tents around the premises. The portable toilet contractor, according to emergency services, has been maxed out. Five out of 11 housing units still have some water service, but the Montana National Guard has to truck in 80,000 gallons of water every day from three different sources just to maintain those water levels.
“They don’t have a lot of water pressure,” Warden Jim Salmonsen said. “They can’t flush their toilets in the high-(security) units, but they have enough pressure for showers.”
On Oct. 9 , staff shut down one valve during routine work on the water system. They didn’t realize until the next morning that doing so sent backpressure into other parts of the system, cracking the 50-year-old framework made of cast iron, PVC and asbestos clay pipes.
Water system failure
A water line going in to a guard station was the first detection of the water system failure at the Montana State Prison.
Sinks stopped working, toilets stopped flushing. Each time someone identified a new leak in the system and cut off water to that area, the diverted pressure would cause another leak somewhere else.
“So that’s when we came to the conclusion that we have a systematic failure,” Montana Department of Corrections Director Brian Gootkin told reporters on Friday during a media tour of the prison.
By the end of last week, the situation shifted from a leak that could be fixed within days to a total system replacement that could take two to three months.
“We’re hoping that that’s worst-case scenario,” Gootkin said. “But that’s what we’re telling everybody: ‘This is the long haul. This is a big deal, and we are preparing for this to be an extended operation.”
The work is being funded in part with funds released by Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Oct. 10 emergency declaration, as well as $42 million for infrastructure made available by the Legislature earlier this year as part of a larger project to build three new low-security housing units at the prison. That project got underway in April and Gootkin said the new water system needs won’t delay the new housing unit construction.
Inside the main administrative building where correctional officers enter and exit each day for work, a large meeting room has transformed into the incident command center. Prison maps, water boil instructions and rosters of phone numbers to coordinate the effort are stacked on tables. Objectives can change by the day, with new teams coming and going depending on the needs that have arisen in the last 24 hours.
Plan section chief Melisa Griffith with the Department of Natural Resources is managing the incident command system from a standup desk with a view of it all. It’s a different scene than her usual wildland firefighting operations, considering the security needs that come along with a prison setting. Much of her work in the last few days has been developing the best understanding of the prison operations and how to interlock the water repair efforts into that system.
“We have to break down those silos so we can work together,” she said.
DOC staff, too, have a role in making sure the work continues. Prison is very schedule-oriented for inmates, and disrupting that routine can lead to uneasy attitudes within the fence. That’s particularly true in the high-security housing, when correctional officers have to be mindful of not mixing certain groups of inmates who have been ordered to stay separate from each other.
“When things like this happen it takes inmates out of their structure,” Salmonsen said. “Using the restroom when they want to is no longer there. … We’ve got to really monitor this to make sure nothing is going to happen.”
Salmonsen said he’s seen his staff meet the moment over the past week.
“It’s good watching them grow into these roles” with different agencies on hand, he said. “They’re in leadership here, but this is a different level.”
On a hilltop to the south of the prison, Montana National Guard’s 372nd Alpha Company – with soldiers from Libby , Kalispell and Havre – work in 12 hour shifts, drawing water from the prison’s two pumphouse wells and Deer Lodge’s city supply down the road.
Montana Department of Corrections officials
Montana Department of Corrections officials tour the Montana State Prison on Oct. 17 during the ongoing water system failure at the facility.
By about noon on Friday, Ssgt. Tyler Paddock’s team had completed their fifth trip up the hill, totaling about 10,000 gallons so far that day. By the time the next shift completes its rotation, soldiers will have hauled 80,000 gallons of water back into the system that runs downhill back to the prison.
Salmonsen said new fittings had to be welded onto the pumps at the prison’s two wells to fit the National Guard’s hoses.
Back down within the prison fence, correctional officers from Montana Women’s Prison in Billings are on site to help mitigate the scramble. Officers from Pine Hills, the juvenile prison facility in Miles City, will soon fall into place behind them.
“It doesn’t get any more serious than this,” Gootkin told reporters. “This is a little city. This is a town that no longer has water.”
Despite the level of damage, Gootkin said it’s so far unclear the extent of the system replacement job ahead.
“We asked the design team to get us an answer by next week, to be able to show us exactly where do we start,” he said. “And then we just sort of move our way through. Once we have that, we’ll make sure we share it and we’re being transparent just to let everybody know, but it’s got to be systematic and efficient.”
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