Water main breaks are surging in North Texas with the sizzling temperatures.
Fort Worth reports almost 200 in the past 30 days, 38% of the year’s total is that short time.
The City of Fort Worth has an online map where website visitors can see the status of active main breaks. The map showed four active breaks Monday afternoon. One of them was still waiting for a crew to fix the leak.
It’s a problem for neighbors who must go without water during repairs and for workers doing the job in such hot weather.
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One example occurred Monday morning on Harvey Avenue in Fort Worth where neighbors reported the leaking water running down the street.
“Water is essential. We need it for everyday living. It's precious. And just to see it run off down the street,” said resident Darron Brown.
City workers boosted the pressure and used special listening equipment trying to pinpoint the source of the leak by the sound of water under the street.
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In Fort Worth, the surge comes along with a labor shortage due to COVID-19. Pavement replacement work is backing up. The city is bringing in contractors to help with the leaks and repairs according to Fort Worth Water Department Spokesperson Mary Gugliuzza.
“The ground is drying out, it's shifting and the pipes are shifting and causing these main breaks,” Gugliuzza said.
Workers ended up removing a large section of pavement that had been removed in that same location for three previous water main breaks on Harvey Avenue, according to Brown.
“We know the water will be off for several hours. So, we just capture all the water we can, fill the bathtub up, get a couple of containers, make sure we have drinking water. It's summertime. It's hot,” Brown said.
Gugliuzza said Fort Worth is spending more than $70 million a year to replace old cast iron pipes that are more brittle and prone to main breaks.
“We have 800 miles of cast iron pipe in our system and we know that over 80% of the breaks we have every year are on our cast iron pipe,” she said.
When streets are torn up for break repairs, better replacements are used. But that did not stop the repeat main break in that same location where the pavement had clearly been replaced before.
“And we're just glad they're out here getting it stopped because we don't know how this is going to affect our water bills.” Brown said.
That won’t be a problem for residents. The water was leaking from the street, outside the water mains that record water usage by residents.
The lost water at city expense in such dry conditions ran off into a storm sewer.
Other communities have similar reports of water main issues.
Dallas reported 65 main breaks over the past weekend from Friday afternoon July 15 to Monday morning July 18. Two Dallas crews were working on main breaks Monday afternoon.
Residential customers can also use the MyH2O portal to view their water usage by hour, day and month. Just click here to register.
