TPT May 2015

Global Marketplace

C oncrete lining deters rust But this is a civic project, after all – a category of endeavour long associated with cross-purposes and delay. Of greater interest to TPT readers are the pipes central to the story. These are some highlights from the section to which the Times writers gave the title “Los Angeles and Its Pipes”: • More than a quarter of a million pipes make up the 6,730- mile DWP water main network. Since 2006, work crews have responded to about 13,000 leaks – about four a day across the city • Over the last eight fiscal years, the DWP spent an average of $44 million annually to replace about 21 miles of pipe per year Even so, water officials estimate that about 8 billion gallons of water are lost each year to leaky pipes, firefighting, evaporation, theft and other causes. The lost water could supply almost 50,000 households for a year • One small pipe leaked more than half a million gallons of water over the course of the year it took the DWP to find and fix it – a task complicated by the effect of ambient noise on sound equipment • In addition to the age of the pipe, factors contributing to leaky water mains include soil quality, water pressure, and leak history. All are weighed by DWP engineers in prioritising pipes for replacement • Each water main receives a letter grade based on its likelihood of failure and the potential consequences of a break. About 6 per cent of the system earned grades of D and F. Officials believe that they can replace all the pipes now ranked D and F (40 per cent of which were installed in 1930 or earlier) over the next ten years. › DWP officials said that cast iron mains installed before the 1930s often rusted from the inside out, causing leaks. According to the LA Times , in the mid-1930s the DWP began lining new pipes with concrete. That change corresponds with a steep decline in leaks, the reporters found. › Infrastructure experts, many of whom commend the Los Angeles DWP for addressing the issue, note that other US cities – including San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon – are also seeing old pipes coming to the end of their service life. Colin Chung is an asset management consultant based in the small city of Irvine, 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles. As he told Messrs Poston and Stevens of the Times , “This is not just an LA problem.” Steel › Tata Steel will supply steel rail for the Crossrail project for improving infrastructure and railway commuter travel in the environs of London. The steel, manufactured at the Indian producer’s Scunthorpe mill in the north of England, will be rolled at the company’s Hayange site in northern France.

‘Not just an LA problem’ Water main leaks in Los Angeles signal what lies ahead for other American cities as corroded pipes near the end of their service life “I love Venice. But it’s old and falling apart, and these things need to be taken care of.” This Venice is in California – not Italy: but Doug Fischer, the resident quoted, knows something of water-related problems. On a day in 2013 a pipe beneath his street split open, disrupting the water supply to some 60 houses in the beachfront neighbourhood in western Los Angeles. As reported by the Los Angeles Times , the records show that workers pumped out standing water, ripped out and tossed aside chunks of asphalt, then dug a chest-deep hole measuring 12 feet square. In the end, crews had removed and replaced seven feet of faulty pipe. The LA Times observed that the water main break that flooded Mr Fischer’s street fits an increasingly common pattern for the waterworks serving the area. The pipe that sprayed water a foot in the air through a hole in the buckled asphalt was more than 80 years old. It was rusted out. And it was buried in corrosive soil. The Times ’s assistant data editor, Ben Poston, and Metro reporter Matt Stevens noted that about one-fifth of the city’s water pipes were installed before 1931 and nearly all will reach the end of their useful lives in the next 15 years. They are responsible for close to half of all water main leaks, and replacing them is a looming problem for the city’s Department of Water and Power. (“Aging Water Mains a $1-Billion Headache for DWP,” 17 February) As pipes continue to deteriorate and leak, millions of gallons of water are spewed onto city streets amid one of California’s worst droughts on record; and costs to repair and maintain the ageing system mount, totalling more than $250 million over the last eight fiscal years. “We must do something about our infrastructure and we must make the necessary investment,” H David Nahai, a former head of the DWP, told the Times . “If we don’t act now, we’ll simply pay more later.” In fact, the DWP has a $1.3-billion plan to replace 435 miles of deteriorating pipe by 2025. To reach that goal, the department would need to more than double the number of pipe miles it replaces annually and more than triple the average amount it spends on pipe replacement each year. Water officials said the department has already budgeted $78 million for water main replacement in the current fiscal year, a significant increase from its annual average. But future progress on the plan for the ageing infrastructure will require answers to difficult questions of funding and of inconvenience to commuters, among others.

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M ay 2015