Summer's here, so are water main breaks

10:36 AM CDT on Thursday, June 30, 2005

By Jeremy Desel /11 News

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Although there has been no significant rain for several weeks in the Houston area, the corner of 9th and Waverly in the Heights has been flooded for several days.

KHOU-TV

Water spews from a pump as the Public Works repairs a water main break in The Heights.

"I noticed it Monday morning and At first I thought it might be a sewer leak," says Heights resident Jason Waligura.

It wasn't that, but a water main that was at first a trickle and then turned Waligura understands that water main breaks happen, but what puzzles him is why a break that was reported Monday morning at 6:30 a.m. gets a crew Wednesday afternoon at 3 p.m.

Public Works says it prioritizes repairs by severity, adding that there are about 200 active breaks in the system. This week on average, there are 45 new breaks reported every day and as many as 50 fixed.

That's only a handful compared to some years.

In 2000 there were times when 1,200 water main breaks flooded the department. Learning from that experience, Public Works now has private contractors on stand by should breaks get out of control.

They say that hasn't yet happened.

"Letting something like this go for three days without fixing it, you wonder are the people there just going through the motions," says Waligura.

This time of year, things can get much worse when it comes to water main breaks because as the ground dries out, the pipes shift. That is when the breaks occur.

Public Works says the water system is in very good shape. Its capacity is more than 750,000 million gallons a day in usage. Tuesday, there were only 458,000 million gallons used.

Although the water main break in the Heights appeared to be fixed, there was still a trickle coming out. That means there will probably have to be another fix by Public Works.