TPT May 2015

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64 May 2015
Global Marketplace
‘Not just an LA problem’
Water main leaks in Los Angeles
signal what lies ahead for other
American cities as corroded pipes
near the end of their service life
“I love Venice. But it’s old and falling apart, and these things
need to be taken care of.”
This Venice is in California – not Italy: but Doug Fischer, the
resident quoted, knows something of water-related problems.
On a day in 2013 a pipe beneath his street split open,
disrupting the water supply to some 60 houses in the
beachfront neighbourhood in western Los Angeles.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the records show
that workers pumped out standing water, ripped out and
tossed aside chunks of asphalt, then dug a chest-deep hole
measuring 12 feet square. In the end, crews had removed and
replaced seven feet of faulty pipe.
The LA Times observed that the water main break that flooded
Mr Fischer’s street fits an increasingly common pattern for
the waterworks serving the area. The pipe that sprayed water
a foot in the air through a hole in the buckled asphalt was
more than 80 years old. It was rusted out. And it was buried
in corrosive soil.
The Times’s assistant data editor, Ben Poston, and Metro
reporter Matt Stevens noted that about one-fifth of the city’s
water pipes were installed before 1931 and nearly all will
reach the end of their useful lives in the next 15 years. They
are responsible for close to half of all water main leaks, and
replacing them is a looming problem for the city’s Department
of Water and Power. (“Aging Water Mains a $1-Billion
Headache for DWP,” 17 February)
As pipes continue to deteriorate and leak, millions of gallons
of water are spewed onto city streets amid one of California’s
worst droughts on record; and costs to repair and maintain the
ageing system mount, totalling more than $250 million over
the last eight fiscal years.
“We must do something about our infrastructure and we must
make the necessary investment,” H David Nahai, a former
head of the DWP, told the Times. “If we don’t act now, we’ll
simply pay more later.”
In fact, the DWP has a $1.3-billion plan to replace 435 miles of
deteriorating pipe by 2025. To reach that goal, the department
would need to more than double the number of pipe miles it
replaces annually and more than triple the average amount it
spends on pipe replacement each year.
Water officials said the department has already budgeted $78
million for water main replacement in the current fiscal year,
a significant increase from its annual average. But future
progress on the plan for the ageing infrastructure will require
answers to difficult questions of funding and of inconvenience
to commuters, among others.
Concrete lining deters rust
But this is a civic project, after all – a category of endeavour
long associated with cross-purposes and delay. Of greater
interest to TPT readers are the pipes central to the story.
These are some highlights from the section to which the
Times writers gave the title “Los Angeles and Its Pipes”:
• More than a quarter of a million pipes make up the 6,730-
mile DWP water main network. Since 2006, work crews
have responded to about 13,000 leaks – about four a day
across the city
• Over the last eight fiscal years, the DWP spent an average
of $44 million annually to replace about 21 miles of pipe per
year
Even so, water officials estimate that about 8 billion gallons
of water are lost each year to leaky pipes, firefighting,
evaporation, theft and other causes. The lost water could
supply almost 50,000 households for a year
• One small pipe leaked more than half a million gallons of
water over the course of the year it took the DWP to find
and fix it – a task complicated by the effect of ambient noise
on sound equipment
• In addition to the age of the pipe, factors contributing to
leaky water mains include soil quality, water pressure,
and leak history. All are weighed by DWP engineers in
prioritising pipes for replacement
• Each water main receives a letter grade based on its
likelihood of failure and the potential consequences of a
break. About 6 per cent of the system earned grades of D
and F. Officials believe that they can replace all the pipes
now ranked D and F (40 per cent of which were installed in
1930 or earlier) over the next ten years.
› DWP officials said that cast iron mains installed before
the 1930s often rusted from the inside out, causing leaks.
According to the LA Times, in the mid-1930s the DWP began
lining new pipes with concrete. That change corresponds with
a steep decline in leaks, the reporters found.
› Infrastructure experts, many of whom commend the Los
Angeles DWP for addressing the issue, note that other
US cities – including San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland,
Oregon – are also seeing old pipes coming to the end of their
service life.
Colin Chung is an asset management consultant based in the
small city of Irvine, 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles. As he
told Messrs Poston and Stevens of the Times, “This is not just
an LA problem.”
Steel
› Tata Steel will supply steel rail for the Crossrail project
for improving infrastructure and railway commuter travel in
the environs of London. The steel, manufactured at the Indian
producer’s Scunthorpe mill in the north of England, will be
rolled at the company’s Hayange site in northern France.