Across the city of Akron, a water pipe averaging $3,000 to fix breaks roughly every 26 hours. Some days, 10 pipes burst at once.
But public service officials say the breakages are nothing to be alarmed about and no reason to raise water rates as miles of aging pipes, some dating almost as far back as the Civil War, continue to carry water.
Wide-impact ruptures, however, such as the Jan. 22 water main break that buckled a street and disrupted gas service near Akron Children’s Hospital, nonetheless stir worries about the system's overall stability and renew residents' concerns about its oldest and potentially weakest components.
Though the city’s public service department worked quickly to repair the break, Dominion Energy says a gas line was downed from the breakage, leaving some customers without gas or heat for days.
That break, while far more disruptive than most in the city, was one of about 300 water main issues that happen annually. Despite aging water infrastructure and pipes, 25% of which are older than 100, the city says such breakages are manageable and won't affect customer rates as it looks ahead to major funding sources and investments expected to improve the system.
City's infrastructure issues common across Midwest
Beneath Akron and surrounding service areas runs 1,200 miles of water mains. In the oldest parts of the city, some remaining water lines date back to 1881.
About a quarter of all water mains are more than 100 years old, according to Public Service Director Chris Ludle.
Akron’s aging infrastructure problem is hardly unique to the city. Across the Midwest, particularly in cities similar to Akron that experienced a large industrial boom in the early- to mid-1900s, leaders and planners must reconcile with aging infrastructure and housing stock that are surpassing a century of use.
The city has been working for years to maintain and replace aging water mains that are particularly problematic, but the departments face budget constraints.
Replacing a single mile of water mains costs $1 million, including excavation, material cost, labor and repairing or installing the road back to its original state or better.
The city’s capital budget allots about $2 million each year for the water main replacement program. That means replacing only two of the 1,200 miles would consume the entire year’s allotment.
Only so much can be chipped away at a time, and the city must prioritize what needs to be replaced.
Those decisions aren’t necessarily based on the age of the pipes, but instead, the break history. The city has over a century of records and a digitized system that keeps information of a main’s age, material type, break history and more. When the department receives its budget, it begins to look at where the largest problem areas are based on an annual condition report.
“There’s a standard that has to be met,” Ludle said. “We’ve had some pipe that’s only 50 years old, but for some reason it’s had quite a few water main breaks on it. We would prioritize that over maybe an older pipe that hasn’t had issues.”
In 2021, there were 334 water main breaks that cost the city about $1 million in emergency repairs. Winter worsens the issue: as temperatures fluctuate quickly, the ground shifts, and the pipes, only about 5 feet underground, are particularly sensitive to that change.
In the summer, the city can go several days or even weeks without water main breaks. Winter, however, brings multiple breaks a day, said Jeff Bronowski, the city’s water supply bureau manager. Last Monday, for example, the city dealt with 10 water main break reports, though no customers were without water.
In the case of the break near Akron Children’s Hospital, which was repaired that same day for about $6,500, the break was “unexpected,” as it had no prior issues in its 94 years of service.
“When you look at that piece of pipe, at the thickness, it looked like it was in good condition,” Ludle said. “What caused it to pop off like that? We don’t know.”
Ludle said with main breaks, public service tends to see more cracks than pieces popping off, which are easier to repair.
Building water main replacements into other projects
In the last 60 years, Ludle said the city has upgraded about 50% of its pipes, with a major focus on eradicating lead from the system.
Ludle said Mayor Dan Horrigan ramped up lead removal services that had been active since the 1960s after he took office in 2016. Now, only 3,000 of the city’s 85,000 service accounts are served by a lead line. The public service department has presented a proposal to City Council that would allow the city to pay a contractor to remove an additional 150 lead services.
As for water mains, there simply isn’t sufficient funding to complete everything, Ludle and Bronowski said. But just because pipes aren’t being replaced does not mean they are not being maintained — throughout the years, public service will work to reline the interior of the pipes and make other upgrades to increase the main’s lifespan.
To consolidate construction time and costs, a primary strategy is baking those repairs and replacements into other projects. Various city departments work throughout the year to align their schedules. For example, if a street is scheduled for resurfacing, public service may look at water lines in need of repairs or replacements, as well as invite private utility companies to determine if they need to make any upgrades while the street is cracked open.
“If we’re going to open up a street, we’re going to try to look at every piece of infrastructure,” Ludle said. “We may not be back in there for another 25 or 30 years.”
Total overhaul projects, such as the $45 million Main Street project, are rare. The multi-phase project, which was funded largely by federal grants, has spanned years. The project involved removing, replacing and updating all old infrastructure, including 1,400 feet of water mains from 1881, beneath the road. In addition, the city built wider sidewalks, a single-lane roundabout at Mill Street, bike lanes and more.
Despite the major modernization project, downtown still maintains some of the oldest infrastructure in the city. Still, residents shouldn’t expect what happened near Akron Children’s to be the norm, Ludle said.
Gradual approach limits need to raise rates
With the cost of $1 million per mile, 1,200 miles of pipe, and a yearly budget hovering around $2 million, Akron officials face an arduous task of modernizing and updating water mains for longevity. Ludle said the ductile iron or cast-iron lined pipes the city uses has a life expectancy of over 100 years, but as of now, Bronowski said the city is not facing a “major emergency.”
“Thus far, it has not been a chronic issue for us,” Bronowski said. “Nobody really knows the life expectancy of a lot of the pipes that have been in the ground. We’re in uncharted waters in a sense with regards to age, but when we have an opportunity to remove something where that age has gotten so high, we do.”
The 2022 water main replacement program is budgeted for $1.9 million in the upcoming capital budget, which has not yet been approved by Akron City Council. Much of that, however, is not straight funding, but rather borrowing capacity for taking out 20- to 30-year loans, Bronowski said.
Otherwise, the only option to put more money into water is to raise rates, Bronowski said, which the city does not want to do. Akron customers are already burdened with one of the highest sewer rates statewide due to the city’s court ordered agreement with the U.S. and Ohio Environmental Protection Agencies in 2014, which mandated several large infrastructure projects totaling more than $1 billion to upgrade its main sewer system to prevent any sewage from reaching waterways.
To balance that, Bronowski said, the city offers a lower water rate so residents aren’t overwhelmed by their combined monthly sewer, water and refuse bills. The billed cost of sewer is nearly four times larger than the cost of water.
“It’s really made it tough,” Bronowski said. “Only about 20% of that bill is going to water. I see the frustration all the time of ‘Oh, water main break, but I pay so much.” You do pay a lot, and I sympathize greatly. Unfortunately, that money doesn’t go to any drinking water services whatsoever. It goes to the massive wastewater projects out there.”
Federal funds expected to give overhaul program a boost next year
A large injection to the budget in the near future, however, will allow major water infrastructure updates without burdening customers with the bill.
The 2023 annual water main replacement is budgeted for $10 million — more than five times the typical amount. Unlike previous years, those dollars are coming from the $145 million in federal funds Akron received as designated by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
“Where a lot of communities are struggling is the investment in aging infrastructure,” Bronowski said. “We have 120-year-old infrastructure that is still in the ground and relied upon each and every day is now reaching its service life. That's a real concern for Akron and a lot of other communities.”
Bronowski said his department is “desperately hoping” for even more funds for a major water investment as the city prepares to receive a large sum from President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill.
“With the money that’s coming, we will be able to eradicate all lead in our system, “ Ludle said. “To have a Midwestern city that’s able to say that is huge. We’re far ahead of a lot of other cities.”
It is unclear how much the city will receive from the infrastructure plan, but officials expect it will not only be enough to completely remove the remaining lead services, but also lend aid to replacing deteriorating water mains and other major water repairs, such as plant upgrades and more.
“When you ask about the infrastructure bill and a lot of the funding that appears like it’s coming very soon, the priority will be and has to be the water systems across America,” he said.
Published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Feb. 7, 2022.