A major water leak just flooded a Columbia street. What we know.
Residents in the Rosewood neighborhood near Superior Street encountered a flood of water rushing out from underneath the street Thursday, after what Columbia Water officials believe was a 12-inch water main splitting down the center.
“Anything 12 (inches) and above gets to be a real big deal. It can do a lot of damage real quick to the roadway or the property,” said Clint Shealy, Columbia’s top water official. “It was a lot of water.”
Residents Thursday were met with the sound the water rushing out of the road so fast that it raised the asphalt up above the rest of the road by several inches, visible in a video posted to the “Rosewood Riff Raff” Facebook group just before 2 p.m. Thursday.
Later in the afternoon, repair crews in neon jackets and hard hats were shoulder-deep in a hole dug out of the road to address the broken pipe.
Shealy said he believes the damage was caused by an old cast-iron pipe that is part of the aging water infrastructure the city of Columbia is currently in the process of replacing throughout Rosewood.
“It’s kind of one of the last pieces that hadn’t been replaced in that area,” he told The State, adding that until crews get the road dug up, they won’t know for sure what happened or how extensive the repair work will be. But Shealy said he expects it to be a significant job to repave the road after the water pushed the asphalt out of place.
That paving work might not be able to begin until temperatures rise. Typically, temperatures need to be 50 degrees or higher for crews to be able to repave, Shealy said. He could not say how much that repaving might cost the city, but he said it will be a “significant” amount of work.
The leak caused some residents to lose water service Thursday, but Shealy said that outage impacted “very few” water customers.
Right now, Shealy believes cold temperatures may have caused the pipe to crack.
“Sometimes those cracks just run, kind of like a rock hitting a windshield,” he said.
On Facebook, one commenter joked that “Lake Superior is forming” as the water flooded a section of Superior Street.
The city of Columbia is in the process of replacing the entire pipe system in the Rosewood area, where the water infrastructure is 80 years old or more. That replacement effort is happening in phases, with the second phase currently underway. The pipes in this area of Rosewood will be replaced as part of that second phase.
This story was originally published December 11, 2025 at 5:40 PM.
