HOBOKEN -- Take your turkeys elsewhere.
That was the message from city and water officials Monday who said that ongoing issues stemming from a water main break in Hoboken Sunday could last through the Thanksgiving holiday.
"This could go through Thanksgiving," Mayor Dawn Zimmer said at a press conference at City Hall Monday afternoon.
"You may want to make your plans accordingly."
Zimmer and Suez Water NJ's senior director of operations, Christopher Riat, explained at the conference that the city and the water company are now not only dealing with the initial water main break, but also with a failure in a valve that regulates water flow between Jersey City, the source of the Hoboken's water, and the Mile-Square City. The failure has made it impossible to stop the flow of water to the broken pipe, officials said.
As a result, low water pressure and a water boil advisory will remain in effect until the valve and initial break are both fixed. The complicated, underground process should begin Monday night with the installation of an emergency stop at the valve, Zimmer and Riat said.
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2015/11/hoboken_water_main_break_leaves_residents_th.html
The cause of both the main break and the valve failure were still not known, Christopher said.
Riat said the stop was an inflatable membrane that would be inserted into the 36-inch line ahead of the faulty valve in Jersey City, which left the water line 80 percent open, a few blocks blocks south of the broken main in Hoboken.
Riat said pipes and other elements of the system in that area dated to the the 1920's, though he said they had been overhauled in the 1950's. Still, he acknowledged that the system was aging, and Zimmer said the incident underscored the city's need to invest in infrastructure.
In addition to the water issues, the break caused flooding, traffic, and congestion throughout south Hoboken Monday.
MORE: Water trucks in Hoboken following huge main break
Hoboken Police Chief Kenneth Ferrante, who was at the press conference, said a Perth Amboy man this afternoon drove around police barricade on Harrison Street into what may have looked like shallow water, before plunging into a sinkhole at the intersection of Harrison and Newark Street that had resulted from the main break.
Ferrante said there was a warrant for the man's arrest in Perth Amboy, and he fled the scene, leaving his vehicle pitched forward in the watery hole, it's front end submerged. He was later charged with reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident, Ferrante said.
Officials acknowledged that water pressure would remain low in high-rise buildings, and could even mean a heating problems for residents of buildings old enough to have hot-water radiators but tall enough to be vulnerable to low pressure.
However, Zimmer's chief of staff, Vijay Chauduri, said the city was not aware of any cases in which buildings actually did have heating problems as a result of the main break.
Hoboken Fire Chief Anton Peskens assured reporters that his department was coordinating with counterparts in Jersey City to insure they could battle any high-rise blazes.
"Everything is fine right now," Peskens told reporters.
The problem spread beyond the Hoboken-Jersey City area, extending farther north in Hudson County and even southern Bergen, where Suez -- formerly United Water Company -- urged customers to conserve water, as Zimmer told Hoboken users to do at her new conference.
"We urge our customers to limit their water use for essential purposes only in order to maintain water pressure in the affected area for fire protection," the company advised. "We ask customers to refrain from running dishwashers, washing machines or other high demand water activities that are not critical, until the water system is stabilized and water pressure returns to normal."
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.