Several roads on Nantucket remain closed because the main sewer line that serves more than 80 percent of the sewered homes on the island suffered a catastrophic failure Thursday night.
The failure on South Beach Street has forced the town to shut down its Sea Street pumping station and divert raw sewage into Nantucket Harbor.
The sewer system itself continues to function but the sewage cannot be pumped to the Surfside wastewater treatment plant. If officials did not release the sewage into the Harbor at the Easy Street Basin it would back up into hundreds of homes around the island.
Town officials are working with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency for an airlift of equipment and personnel to fix the problem.
Sewer Director, David Gray, tells the Inquirer and Mirror the best case scenario is one day to repair, worst case is a couple of days.
The sewer line break has undermined the integrity of South Beach street which, along with surrounding streets, has been blocked by concrete barriers.