Water pipes can be costly to maintain, replace

by Evelyn Henley
For The Post

Various factors can cause water pipes to break, but regardless of the cause, fixing the break can be costly.

"There is not a master plan to replace all the water and sewage lines in the city," said Ray Hazlett, assistant Service-Safety director. "That would be a tremendous amount of expense."

Every water system needs improvement, but to replace the entire system would cost millions of dollars, said Nick Joseph, the city divisional water supervisor.

"If you were to replace the water line down Court Street it would cost about a million dollars," Joseph said. "Court Street is only about a quarter of a mile."

The expense of replacing the water pipes is not the only problem that a systematic replacement plan would cause. In many cases, other outdated systems also need to be brought up to code, Hazlett said.

"Once they start digging in those areas there are many problems that are discovered and it gets very expensive," he said.

The water department has several expenses it has to deal with aside from the maintenance of the water pipes. With a limited budget, there is only so much money that can be spent on updating water pipes, said Jimmy Stewart, city auditor.

"Water maintenance last year had a budget of $650,000 and I believe they actually expended or encumbered $560,000 by the end of December last year," he said. "You are looking at better than over half of their expenses are on employee costs." Hazlett added that more than half of water maintenance's expenses are on employee costs.

When there is a water line break, city officials need to determine who is going to pay for the repaving of the street and other related matters.

But some of the new developments, such as Armitage Road, might not have the same problems with their water pipes.

"There are advantages in a new development-everything is new," Hazlett said. "If a developer wants the city to assume responsibility for water lines, they must go through the most current processes. In the theory, they should last longer than the old systems."

For the older pipes, new technologies are being developed to prevent the lines from being affected by the environment.

"What they try to do is surround the water line with sand so when the soil moves the sand will give and put less pressure on the pipe," Hazlett said.

There are also technologies that handle the problem of clay eroding the pipes.

"All the new metal piping is wrapped in a ploy bag and select land fills are used that are not acidic to the pipes," Joseph said.

If residents are concerned about their water pipes, they can get a consumer confidence report, said Crystal Kynard, City of Athens water plant manager.

"It has test results, explanation of boil orders, what we do to protect the water, and it gives an explanation of each step for processing water goes through with a flow chart," she said.