BANGOR – A new, muddy stream tumbled Thursday morning down a ditch off the western side of Kenduskeag Avenue.

The stream’s source was a rip in the 12-inch cast-iron water main under the intersection of Kenduskeag and Valley avenues, which led to a 200,000-gallon leak that disrupted water service to several hundred homes and businesses for several hours.

Service was restored Thursday afternoon to the approximately 40 homes that had their water supply shut down briefly, Bangor Water District Manager Wayne Rogalski said Thursday evening.

He said that about 1,500 homes were affected indirectly by the break in terms of low water pressure.

At about 5:30 a.m., calls began pouring in to the Water District from residents who complained of low pressure.

“We knew that in all likelihood we were experiencing a main break of some size,” Rogalski said later Thursday morning.

Husson College sophomore Sarah Foss was among area residents affected.

“My boyfriend was in the shower,” she said. “He came back and he said the water shut off. He was all soaped up and everything.”

Meanwhile, staff at the Union Street Dunkin’ Donuts could not brew coffee for their customers, which meant they did not open at 5:30 a.m. as usual.

“We lost a lot of money,” Assistant Manager Sandra Perry said.

She and her crew cleaned the store with sanitizing fluid while waiting four hours for the water to come back on. Although Perry said she was glad that her crew found ways to keep occupied during the water – and coffee – shortage, she hopes it won’t happen again soon.

“It was an absolute shame that it did happen to begin with,” she said. “It was hard on everybody. But I would like to thank the people who weren’t too angry with us because we didn’t have coffee.”

Bangor Fire Department Assistant Chief Vance Tripp said that this kind of water disruption could have dangerous repercussions for firefighters.

“If we go to a working fire, then we’ve got to have upwards of a couple of thousand of gallons a minute,” Tripp said Thursday afternoon. “And when the hydro pressures are really, really low, we can’t get those quantities of water.”

He said that the only significant fire incident Thursday morning was a furnace fire on Third Street, which was extinguished with dry chemicals.

Workers from the Bangor Water District canvassed the streets before dawn looking for the break in the water line.

By midmorning, the leak had been located, isolated and excavated. A worker wearing jeans and boots stood 5 feet deep in a large hole dug around the leaky pipe. He was protected from road cave-ins by a metal trench box. Gallons of brown water continued to be pumped out of the hole and spurted into the ditch.

“It looks like it may just have been a typical break, or a weak spot in the pipe,” construction supervisor Don Cammack said at the work site. “With the temperature change, it just snapped.”

Cammack said that the crew would have to replace 6 or 7 feet of the 1960s-era water main. Some of the city’s water pipes date back to the late 1800s, he said.

“When you put pipes in the ground, you’re expecting about a hundred-year return on it,” the supervisor said.

He expected that the broken main would be repaired and the hole patched over by Thursday afternoon. Water pressure was mostly restored by about 8 a.m., officials said.

By 2 p.m., only 40 or 50 homes still were without water.

“A lot of our leaks start this time of year,” Cammack said. “Once you get freezing and thawing, it has an effect on your pipes.”

NEWS writer Eric Russell contributed to this report.