Apparent water main break in Adams Morgan

A water main broke in the Adams Morgan area of the District on Tuesday night, prompting a restaurant to close and adding to the rising number of broken mains that typically afflict Washington in the winter.

The precise cause of the break reported in the 1700 block of Columbia Road NW was not immediately known. But water utilities recognize that the frequency of breaks goes up as the temperature thermometer goes down.

The mercury has been plunging here. Reagan National Airport temperatures have dipped below freezing for parts of 15 consecutive days through Tuesday.

The break on Columbia Road led Pepe Montesinos, manager of the Mixtec restaurant in the 1700 block, to close. “We don’t have water,” he said.

Before the break was identified and the flow was halted, he said, water was seeping through a wall of the restaurant’s basement and he closed as a precaution.

“It was a shock,” he said. “We didn’t know what was going on.”

He said he hoped repairs to the main would allow him to reopen Wednesday.

Breaks were reported or were already under repair in spots that included the 1400 block of S Street NW and W Street between 44th and 46th streets NW.

Water was cut off Tuesday evening to a house on Seminary Place in Silver Spring, a resident said. The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission said a main 16 inches in diameter required repair. The utility’s Web site reported about a dozen such problems.

One was a 12-inch main in the 700 block of E. University Boulevard in Silver Spring. An area resident, Artis Palmer, said that “there was water” on an intersecting street “for a couple of days.”

--Martin Weil and Clarence Williams