L.A. Averages 3 Water Main Breaks A Day Amid Drought
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Drought-stricken Los Angeles averages three water main breaks a day, which some say amounts to the loss of enough water to supply thousands of families a year.
In fact, the deputy head of the water system at L.A. Department of Water and Power says the city each day loses a few football fields of drinking water.
"Several million gallons of water a day that is not getting delivered to customers," said Marty Adams of the LADWP.
Lucio Soibelman, a professor at USC, attributes the problem to a lack of public concern and funding to detect the problem pipelines before it is too late.
"With water pipelines, they are underground. We don't see them. We cannot really feel how bad they are in their condition," said Soibelman. "There is not a full system operational because there is no investment to do that."
But in July, dramatic images of an exploding geyser along Sunset Boulevard forced people to take notice.
In all, 20 million gallons of water devoured the UCLA campus, destroying cars, inundating a basketball court, and trapping students inside flooded parking garages.
Had the right technology been in place, officials say the ruptured 93-year-old pipe and millions of dollars in campus damage could have been prevented.
"Interestingly, we had a test where the UCLA break was 2 years prior, and there was no problem detected," said Adams.
Back on Halloween, about 70,000 gallons of water gushed out of a seemingly small crack in a pipe in Commerce.
The California Water Service Co. dug up the pipe from the 1950s.
DWP officials say they're replacing more than 18 miles of aging pipe a year as part of a replacement program.
But the nation as a whole is in worse shape.
The American Society of Civil Engineering gives the United States a grade rating of "D" for the drinking water infrastructure, while California gets a "C."
But in L.A., larger pipes are needed, which means larger volumes of water are lost, according to Soibelman.
"L.A. it's more critical because we don't have water," said Soibelman. "All those networks and all those systems are deteriorating faster than we are replacing them so the problems getting worse. Very few systems are getting better year after year."
Meanwhile, DWP officials say they're constantly testing new products and technology to prevent water main breaks. They have yet to find a solution.
California reported $39 billion dollars in drinking water infrastructure needs over the next 20 years.
"We do know that we need to increase a level of replacement. We kind of use age of a pipe as an indicator. Age is not everything but it kind of gives you a road map of what's ahead," said Adams.
