LOOBACK: Deep-sea divers used few times on East Side Lake, Mill Pond
Leaking water mains at bottom reason for specialty services needed in 1937, 1949, 1954 in Austin
Every minute, 400 to 500 gallons of spring water pumped from the Austin Country Club’s property was bursting into East Side Lake in May 1949.
A nearby resident reported seeing water bubbling a foot above the lake’s surface.
The problem was a 16-inch water main at the bottom of East Side Lake had a nearly 3-foot-long break. This line ran southwest from today’s northeast corner of East Side Lake to the stone wall.
For four decades at that point, the city had pumped water into its supply from Sargeant Springs on the country club’s west end. With an enclosed pump house now, the site remains Austin Utilities’ oldest well.
When this water first was piped into town in 1911, there was no East Side Lake — just Dobbins Creek. This made it easy to put a water line through that area on its way to a water tank near the downtown dam.
In the 1930s, the city started building a dam on Dobbins and creating a lakebed for East Side Lake, which started flowing over the dam in November 1938.
With 10 feet of water covering the broken main in 1949, a call for help went to a “deep-sea diver” from Duluth, Minn.: Capt. John Thompson, son of Horace Thompson, the “dean of Duluth divers.”
While his father retired from diving at age 74 three years earlier, the 44-year-old John Thompson had 26 years of experience and was accustomed to diving in Lake Superior, including down to 100 feet. Austin’s lake was one of his shallowest waterbodies of water.
In Austin, Thompson plunged into East Side wearing 150 pounds of equipment with underwater lights and resembling a spaceman. He found the break, and, four days later, installed a mechanical sleeve specially made in Minneapolis.
During the operation, Benny Braaten, of Austin, who operated a boat between East Side’s shoreline and the raft used by Thompson rescued an unidentified man from the lake. The man and a boy were fishing nearby in a boat when the man went overboard while they changed positions.
Braaten pulled the man out of the water and got the boy — who remained in the boat half-filled with water — safely to shore.
This underwater repair was the second in Austin’s history; the other was in 1937 when a water line between the power plant and Hormel plant broke 12 feet below the Cedar River’s surface.
“Here is a sight seldom seen in a Midwestern prairie state,” the Herald wrote June 16, 1937, under a photo of the diving team on a raft.
A leak in an 8-inch main became apparent in winter when water failed to freeze there. In June, a crowd gathered on the shore to “watch one of the strangest sights ever presented in this city,” the Herald wrote.
“With his rubber suit, brass helmet, heavy shoes and other deep-sea accoutrements, the diver, A. Thompson, walked down the ladder from a raft into the waters of the Cedar River early this afternoon.”
This diver only was called “A. Thompson,” of Minneapolis, but might have been the well-known 1930s diver from there named Jack Thompson. It’s not clear if he was related to the Duluth family of Thompson divers.
Back to East Side Lake, diver John Thompson returned there in February 1954 for another leak. He preferred winter work as he liked an ice base over a raft.
Sand and mud on the lake bottom stalled the work but Thompson cleared the pipe and repaired it.
“It is a reminder that as long as the main is in the lake, there will be some danger in contamination of the city’s water supply from polluted lake water when leaks occur,” the Herald wrote Feb. 15, 1954.
Public opinion varied on the risk posed by water mains underwater. State health officials “evidently believe there is some risk, and this is apparently the reason the city’s water supply is not given a higher rating,” the Herald wrote, noting that’s why an “extra dose of chlorine” must be added to Austin’s water.
Heavily chlorinated water doesn’t taste good, the Herald wrote, and plumbers say it leads to leaky faucets.
The Herald advised officials to consider relocating the water main — an expensive project — when construction would start on the future Belt Line highway, which opened as Interstate 90 in 1961.
A year later, Thompson was back in Austin early 1955 to cut a hole in the concrete wall of the city’s water reservoir at the country club to increase water flow. His work was stalled because “trouble developed in the diver’s communications equipment” but got the job done.
By June 1957, work began on running a new main along Brownsdale Avenue (8th Ave NE) on East Side Lake’s north side. Once completed later that summer, the underwater line was abandoned.
“The water main under the lake was always frowned upon by the Minnesota State Board of Health because of the danger of lake water getting into the water line,” the Herald wrote Aug. 28, 1957.
A month later, the Herald asked readers: “Would you prefer less chlorine in your drinking water?”
The newspaper noted removing the main under the Cedar River next might allow the city to reduce the chlorine levels in the city’s water supply.
According to Austin Utilities, an old, cast-iron water main that ran across the bottom of the Cedar River at Austin Mill Pond was replaced in 2012 with a polyethylene main that was drilled under the river bottom.
