Phoenix residents will pay more for water
City wants to expand program to replace pipes
In August, neighbors in a west Phoenix neighborhood woke up to asphalt bubbling in the middle of their residential street.
Water then began spewing out of the street, eventually caving in the road and leaving behind a 10-foot-by-10-foot crater.
“It was really minor at first, and then it progressively got bigger,” resident Paola Olivera told at the time. “The hole got really big, and I realized it wasn’t a little thing anymore.”
It was the result of a broken waterline, which caused a nearby gas line to also rupture, the Phoenix Fire Department said nearby homeowners were evacuated for part of the day as workers remedied the potential danger.
About 4,000 waterline breaks occur each year in Phoenix, according to the city. Although not all are as serious as the August predicament, about 12 percent of breaks occur on large water mains, which often require the closure of major thoroughfares to repair.
On Jan. 3, 19th Avenue was closed between Van Buren and Adams streets for most of a day because of a watermain break. The week prior, there were traffic delays at 16th Street and Bethany Home Road because of a break.
Phoenix officials want to expand
the city’s pipe-replacement program, but they have no money to do so. They proposed a two-year water-rate increase to help generate $500 million for pipe replacement.
The proposal would raise rates in Phoenix by 6 percent in 2019 and 6 percent again in 2020.
That amounts to an increase of $1.98 per month in 2019 and an additional $2.35 per month in 2020 for the average customer, the city said. The average Phoenix resident currently pays about $33.62 per month for water.
The council rejected the rate increase in December, but approved it after a reconsideration on Jan. 9.
Although the water-rate increase is expected to help, city data shows water infrastructure problems are only going to get worse.
Phoenix has 7,000 waterlines across the city — the same number as Los Angeles and twice the number of lines as Chicago. The lines typically last 75 to 100 years, which means that lines installed in the 1930s and 1940s are starting to hit a critical age. Unsurprisingly, those lines see the most breaks. A map of waterline breaks from 2011-18 shows that the most breaks have occurred in the central and south Phoenix areas. Nearly all of downtown Phoenix is covered in black, indicating there have been more than 18 breaks over the eight-year period in nearly every corner of the central city.
Break frequency is one of the elements the Water Department reviews when deciding how to prioritize pipe replacement, Assistant Water Director Troy Hayes said.
The city has upped its pipe replacement from about 11.4 miles per year in 2014 to 44 miles last year, using funds from a previous rate increase that are nearly depleted.
If the new increase had failed, the city would have had to stop proactively replacing pipes and only react to breaks, Hayes said.
“I can go out and fix them, but eventually this whole map will be black,” Hayes said.
Phoenix installed 2,865 miles of water mains between 1950 and 1980. It installed 178 miles of mains in the 1930s and 1940s. That means the city will have even more pipes in need of replacement in the next few decades.
Water-main breaks are more than just an inconvenience or a traffic problem. They also waste an unknown amount of water.
During changing weather temperatures, the city can experience 20 to 30 breaks per day, Hayes said. While larger water-main breaks are typically resolved within a day or two, smaller leaks can continue for two to three weeks, he said.
Kaitlyn Fitzgerald, public-relations director at Zero Mass Water, a Scottsdale-based water-technology company, is committed to ensuring communities in the United States and beyond have long-term access to reliable water.
“Water is an important resource, and investing in infrastructure to make sure we’re not wasting even a drop of it is an important investment for our future,” Fitzgerald said.
Aging water infrastructure can also disproportionately impact minority and low-income communities.
The areas with the least reliable pipes in Phoenix also house some of the city’s most economically disadvantaged communities.
Fitzgerald said this is a common trend around the country.
“You can’t separate water injustice from economic injustice or racial injustice,” Fitzgerald said.
Although the economically disadvantaged communities are the ones that need new pipes the most, they are also the ones that would likely be hit hardest by the rate increase.
The rate increases will affect low-water users less (about a $1 monthly increase each year) and high-water users more (about a $5 monthly increase each year).
Although the increase may seem minimal to some, it could price low-income users out of the water market.
Fitzgerald said cities need to “get creative” with how they fund infrastructure improvements.
“We can’t keep passing that burden onto economically disadvantaged communities,” she said.
Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio has been ardently opposed to the water-rate increase as an unfair additional burden on taxpayers.
In a seething statement released after the December vote, he called the rate hike a massive tax increase.
“The politicians who voted for this have gone insane and are showing their disrespect to you and your family who will be forced to pay this tax,” DiCiccio said.
Williams, who is serving as the interim mayor until March, considers water policy one of the most important issues the council will tackle under her leadership
“This is something that is too important to this city — the entire city. (It’s) something that cannot be ignored. Water is essential not only to our lives, but the growth of our city and the continuation,” Williams said at the December meeting.
When the rate hike failed, she immediately pledged to bring it back for reconsideration.
DiCiccio, council members Michael Nowakowski and Laura Pastor and Vice Mayor Jim Waring voted against the increase in December.
Nowakowski and Pastor represent central and south Phoenix — the parts of the city with the oldest water pipelines and most water breaks.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Nowakowski said he still could not support the rate increase because some of his constituents already struggle to afford water.
Pastor voted for a water-rate increase in 2016. In December, she said she believed that hike was supposed to take care of all needed pipe replacement, particularly in her district.
The city has replaced pipes in District 4, but as other pipes continue to age, the needs have continued to increase.
Pastor this week said she now knows it’s likely that water-rate increases will need to continue for the next decade or so to keep up with the pipes.
At the Jan. 9 meeting, she said through tears that she was mourning her father, former Congressman Ed Pastor who died in late November, and trying to follow his leadership.
“One of the conversations I had with him was that leadership is difficult because when ... you take votes, it impacts many and it impacts some. This vote is a very difficult vote,” she said.
She said she wasn’t in the right head space to make a decision in December, and after receiving clarity on the issue she now supports the increase because of water’s importance to the Valley’s continued growth.
“I will be the one who will step up to the plate and hit the home run ... and make sure I lead and make sure I lead a city to be able to have water,” she said.
The water-rate increase will allow Phoenix to spend $500 million on new wells and other machinery to bring the water from the ground to the surface, and new apparatuses to usher that water to north Phoenix.