Crucial system vulnerable in crisis
A water main break that spilled 100 million gallons of treated water into the Great Miami River caused widespread disruptions, closed schools and businesses and forced many residents to buy bottled water or to boil tap
water before use. Dayton’s abundant underground water supply is regularly marketed as one of the region’s best assets, and city officials say Dayton has spent more than $100 million in the last nine years on water infrastructure improvements.
Montgomery County expects to spend hundreds of millions more in the next two decades on its system.
But outages and water pressure problems that began Wednesday evening resulted in as many as 400,000 people in Dayton and Montgomery County being put under a boil advisory to try to prevent them from potentially
consuming contaminated water.
“We know it’s unprecedented,” Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said. “We appreciate everyone paying attention to the boil advisory.”
All customers had pressure back Thursday, but it likely won’t be until Saturday at the earliest that a boil advisory could be lifted for at least 45,000 businesses and households.
It remains unclear how a water main under the Great Miami River failed late Wednesday afternoon, and the utilities didn’t even locate the problem until 1:30 a.m. Thursday, said Shelley Dickstein, Dayton city manager.
The city released little additional information — including the location — about the 36-inch main break.
Water service was restored to normal capacity Thursday after the break was isolated from the system, according to the city.
‘Need to replace pipes all over’
The region’s underground water supply is touted as one of the Miami Valley’s best assets.
Easily reached by pumps, the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer provides a plentiful source of water that’s more easily treated than surface water some municipal- ities draw.
But the pipes that move local water to businesses and households are aging.
Dayton’s 792 miles of water mains are on average 75 years old, and more than 50 per- cent of Montgomery County’s 1,400-mile system was put in more than 50 years ago, according to public officials.
“We know we need to replace pipes all over,” said Montgomery County Commission President Debbie Lieberman. “So we’re look- ing at all of that. It’s going to take many years, but so many of these pipes are very old.”
Dickstein said all sorts of pipe — some more robust than others — has gone into the 150-year-old system.
“There are several differ- ent kinds of piping materials used from cast iron to ductile iron to cheaper material that actually occurred during the war periods, which is really ... the material that fails the most,” Dickstein said.
County faces $750 million in upgrades
County officials have esti- mated $750 million will need to be spent over the next 20 years to maintain and replace aging portions of the system that serves about 81,000 customers.
The city of Dayton has spent more than $100 mil- lion in the last nine years on water infrastructure improvements to the system with about 56,000 total customers.
About a year ago, Dayton and Montgomery County — at times at odds over water distribution — signed a 20-year deal to help the governments operate the systems more seamlessly, officials said at the time.
The systems displayed just how seamless t hey are Wednesday afternoon at about 4:30 p.m. as calls began flooding the water services as people lost pressure, some altogether.
“It’s a unique system. It’s intertwined,” Lieberman said.
Montgomery County already spends roughly $2 million annually to repair 300 or more water main breaks in the system, records show. Last fall, the city said it had repaired 111 water main breaks and 24 leaks through the third quarter of 2018.
No normal break
But Wednesday’s leak was no normal break, one not readily evident to passersby and one missed by seasoned professionals, Dickstein said.
“We could not find it, despite the diligent effort of all our crews out driving 1,600 miles of piping trying to locate it and then having it basically emptying into a river,” Dickstein said. “This is really an anomaly.”
Dayton on average has far fewer water breaks and leaks than other municipal water systems, Whaley said.
“We’re always very, very low compared to the rest of the country,” Whaley said, “and we’ve done the work to reinvest in our infrastruc- ture.”
Whaley said water line breaks are inevitable when there are extreme weather swings. The wild tempera- ture fluctuations are tough on the pipes, she said.
Like potholes, most water main breaks occur during this time of year because the ground freezes and thaws, she said.
Whaley said the city will evaluate what happened and figure out if there are ways to improve its emergency procedures.
But she said overall she was pleased with how the city handled the crisis.
“I don’t know any city that has zero water line breaks — it’s just not going to happen,” she said.
Crisis triggers emergency ops center
The potential of thousands of residents without drink- ing water triggered the acti- vation of the county’s Emergency Operations Center.
Responsible for coordinating the response to emer- gencies, the nerve center is activated only about once every three years, said Jeff Jordan, director, Montgom- ery County Office of Emergency Management.
Within an hour of the problem, Jordan said a team started to assemble that has grown to 20-30 a shift that continues to work around the clock downtown at Public Health-Dayton & Mont- gomery County.
The group includes mem- bers of law enforcement, fire and EMS, public health, area hospitals, the Red Cross and other agencies. The group is coordinating delivery of bottled water to areas remaining under a boil advisory and also sent a request to the state’s Emergency Operations Center for help with potable water in case the situation turned dire.
Disruption for some, crisis for others
Water disruptions like outages or boil-water advisories are a hassle for some people, because they will have to make a trip to Kroger or Walmart to buy water or get a shower at the gym or somewhere else, said Teri Schoch, a member of Dayton Citizens’ Water Brigade.
The group has advocated for strong water well-field protection policies.
But for poor people, losing running water or access to clean water in their homes can be a crisis, she said.
“We so often feel bad for people who are merely inconvenienced, but this is bigger than just inconvenienced,” she said.
The fact that Dayton’s distribution system is expected to be back to normal about a day after losing millions of gallons of water shows just how abundant the underground water supply is, she said.
“That’s the gift in the Miami Valley — we have enough water that we can lose a couple million gallons in the Great Miami, and within 24 hours we won’t even notice there was an issue,” she said. “Hallelujah we live here: Don’t tell the people in the southwest, because they’ll come running up here.”
‘We know we need to replace pipes all over. So we’re looking at all of that. It’s going to take many years, but so many of these pipes are very old.’
Debbie Lieberman Montgomery County Commission president