The massive water-main break in Montgomery County, which shut down local governments, businesses and summer camps Monday, is just a drop in the bucket compared with the 700 water-main breaks across the nation each day.
Each costs an average of $2,000 to fix, and the problem is expected to worsen as the aging U.S. water pipeline infrastructure deteriorates.
It could cost up to $250 billion over 20 or 30 years to restore the network, according to the American Water Works Association (AWWA), which represents more than 4,600 U.S. water utilities.
The Montgomery County break, which spilled more than 100 million gallons, affected Shady Grove, Germantown, Olney, Hampshire Green and Burtonsville.
On Monday night, the county ordered about 1,200 restaurants outside the Beltway to close after the break in Rock Creek Regional Park north of Rockville.
“We have to be safe so that we won’t be sorry,” said Dr. Ulder J. Tillman, the county health officer.
Utility crews worked into the evening to fix the break, and all customers were expected to have full water pressure Monday night. Most of the water washed into Rock Creek, near where the pipe broke Sunday evening, a spokeswoman for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission said.
“It is a slow and tedious process,” Lynn Riggins said. “We need to do it slowly to make sure there is no additional pressure on other mains.”
County officials advised residents served by WSSC to boil their water through Wednesday, to avoid contamination. They also temporarily banned lawn watering and dish washing, and asked residents not to flush their toilets to avoid further loss of water pressure in the system.
WSSC serves more than 1.8 million residents in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.
Customers began reporting water pressure problems to the WSSC at 9:15 p.m. Sunday, though the utility did not locate the break until 4 a.m. Monday.
As officials worked to shut down water flow to the 48-inch cement water main in a wooded area at Muncaster Mill Road and Meadowside Lane, a second, 12-inch pipe burst - which officials attributed to the increase in pressure caused by work crews. Workers quickly repaired the second break.
The county fire department sent 3,500-gallon tanker truck throughout the county Monday, which it was equipped to do since the county has no fire hydrants.
Montgomery General Hospital was forced to call in tanker trucks to supply clean water.
A steam pipe explosion in New York City last year put a new focus on the nation’s infrastructure of roads and pipes, many of which were built near the turn of the last century.
The number of major spills increases as the more than 1 million miles of water pipes across the nation corrode.
“Overall we’re at a stage where we need to be rebuilding the infrastructure that earlier generations bought and paid for,” said Tom Curtis, deputy executive director the AWWA.
Other engineers said it is impossible to put a dollar figure on the problem because a thorough evaluation of the nation’s water and sewer pipes has never been performed.
“The thought in the past has been, ’If it leaks, it’s just water,’” said William Schutt, president of MATCOR Inc., which evaluates the integrity of pipes around the globe.
But as the scarcity of clean water and the severity of breaks have magnified, that attitude has changed, Mr. Schutt said.
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