Greenfield residents recently received an unpleasant reminder regarding their water bill.
Oh, it wasn’t that the municipality raised rates. Rather, it was about the number of breaks in water pipes running all around town — and what this says about the coming expense for upgrading the aging system.
In a little more than a month, there were at least 15 breaks in the service water lines to customers and five water main breaks. And the culprit here has been the Rocky Mountain Water Tank repair project that got started in August. Here’s how Department of Public Works Director Don Ouellette explained it:
“We normally have a break a week — usually a service break — and you’ve got an old system here. A lot of the pipes are between 70 to 100 years old. We took the water tank offline Aug. 18, and that screwed up the water flow. It also increased the pressure that we have in town by about 10 pounds. What I think you’re finding is that because of those two things, we’re getting all of the weak points in our system broken, and we’re doing all of the repairs now.”
We’re not sure what the life expectancy is for a municipal water system. An article in WaterWorld Magazine points out that there are a number of factors that play into how long pipes last, including “the type of pipe, soil and air characteristics and installation. Network designers often use 50 years as the average life expectancy for most pipe types. That estimate may be too conservative, depending on the materials and techniques used.”
As seen in Greenfield, the pipes certainly qualify as old, and that leads to leaks, problems with pressure and, eventually, breaks and the need to replace the lines.
Ouellette says the town is aware of what it faces with an aging water system. For example, the town recently replaced the water main on Leyden Road to the tune of $1.2 million. As far as the bigger picture, however, while the entire blueprint for replacing water mains hasn’t been put in place, the town has a yearly line item now in its capital budget for water main work.
And there’s about $30,000 designated in the town’s operating budget for repairs.
“As far as the significant water main repairs that we need to do, that’s going to start being put into the capital plan, and eventually we’ll get into a program where we’re replacing maybe a mile a year or something of that nature, but it’s just going to take a little bit of time to build that up,” Ouellette said. “The top priority was really to get the water tank done.”
While there may be state or federal money available to help with replacement, Greenfield is going to have to pony up its share in the coming years. It may not be what people want, but there’s no way to get around the fact that the bill is coming due with this aging system.