Old cast-iron water lines create problems in city
Residents’ complaints over waterline ruptures in their front yards moved the Bellaire city council to take action and highlighted a citywide concern about aging waterlines.
“Every day they are digging, it seems like, on both sides of my driveway. I had water coming out of both sides of my driveway for three days over the holidays. All that dirt comes up and I am driving through 3-to-4 inches of muck. It sticks to your vehicle like glue and follows you into the garage and house. It has been two or three months we have been living this way. We need help. We are tired of it,” said Joe Pfau, who lives in the 5200 block of Grand Lake Street.
City Manager Paul Hofmann and Director of Public Works Brant Gary said the problems arose because of water line work taking place on nearby streets.
Changes in pressure resulted in failure of the Grand Lake Street waterline. Changes in water pressure happened when contractors began exercising the new lines on adjacent streets and bringing them online stressed the aged and brittle cast iron Grand Lake Street line and provoked the ruptures.
An April 2015 report from City Engineer James Andrews said a significant portion of the city’s waterlines are around 70 years old.
The council voted to use about $125,000 that has been carried over from the fiscal year 2015 budget in awater line account to replace the water line.
Councilman David Montague said he is concerned about reports from the city manager and city engineer that 38 percent of the city’s water lines are cast iron similar to the lines on Grand Lake Street.
Andrews outlined the situation.
“As it stands today, about 62 percent of the original water
distribution system has been successfully replaced using different funding sources, including the Bellaire Millennium Renewal Program,” he said.
“After BMR, and probably more of a factor, after Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, the city began to concentrate on improving the paving and drainage sys- tems through the Rebuild Bellaire Program, and less emphasis on improving the remaining 70-year-old water distribution system,” Andrews wrote.
Andrews report identified 13.5 percent of the city’s remaining, non-replaced waterlines as high priority to be addressed over a 1-5 year period.
The remaining 24.5 percent of the nonreplaced lines could be addressed over a 5-25-year period.
The cost for replacing the high priority waterlines over a period of 5 years is estimated to be $11 million.
“I would characterize this as a significant unfunded need. Broken waterlines create problems. We lose water we are buying from the city of Houston, we have service inter- ruptions and we disrupt neighbors and tear up their yards,” said Hofmann.
He said iron lines become brittle and break easily when the ground moves. He said the ground moves because of fluctuations in the soil moisture content.
“Exercising the valves and changing the pressure in the pipe can also cause a rupture, which is what we think contributed to the breaks in the Grand Lake Street line. We had to turn valves because of construction work on nearby Ferris Street,” he said.
He said the city has included the $11 million figure mentioned above in its capital improvement plan.
“The $11 million is in our capital improvement plan, but is not yet funded. It is intended to address the most critical of the lines over a 5-year period,” Hofmann said.
He believes debt financing (bond sales) would be the best approach to provide that funding and that the 38 percent of lines are spread around throughout the city.