Crews for the Great Lakes Water Authority were working Monday, May 11, to weld a new segment of a 42-inch water main into place in Auburn Hills. But the timeline for resolving a water crisis that has left Orion Township, northern Auburn Hills and the Village of Lake Orion virtually without water could take up to two weeks, officials said.
“We hope to crunch that timeline down shorter, but we can’t until we further test the welds on this new pipe,” Great Lakes Water Authority CEO Suzanne Coffey told the Free Press on Monday afternoon.
Speaking at a luncheon in Macomb County on Monday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said, “Two weeks is too long for businesses, for schools and for families to go without water. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, but I’m hopeful that GLWA, Oakland County and contractors can speed up the timeline to restore service. We are monitoring it and assisting wherever we can to cut that time down. We want to get people restored as quickly as possible.”
Whitmer activated the state’s emergency operations center in Lansing and declared a state of emergency for Oakland County on Sunday to facilitate state relief to impacted communities.
The failed segment of the 42-inch main beneath River Woods Park in Auburn Hills, off Squirrel Road south of M-59 highway, is being taken for analysis to learn why it broke.
“It was put in in 1975; it’s 50 years old; it should have lasted 100 years, so it is halfway through its useful life,” Coffey said. “It shouldn’t be an issue.”
Coffey added that the break was in the middle of the pipe, not at a weld, and that there is no evidence of damage from a utility striking the pipe.
Same type of water main failed in Farmington Hills in March
But this is not the water authority’s first experience with this type of pipe failing prematurely. Known as pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe, or PCCP, it is typically a large-diameter, high-pressure pipe used in larger urban applications. It features inner and outer layers of mortar with a steel cylinder inside and a steel cable surrounding the cylinder to pull the pipe into compression.
A 48-inch water main break on 14 Mile Road in Farmington Hills on March 7 of this year left residents in Novi and Walled Lake temporarily without water and, later on, with a boiled-water advisory. That segment of failed PCCP pipe had been inspected five years earlier with “zero defects; no evidence of degradation,” Coffey said.
“There is no doubt that our infrastructure is aging, so there is some of that,” she said. “But some of these pipes are not aged out. Something is going on with these pipes.”
The Great Lakes Water Authority has 80 miles of PCCP pipes in its 800-mile, eight-county system. Replacing a mile of such mains costs $20 million, Coffey said, so replacing it all would take $1.6 billion. “This is not the kind of thing we can just add to a budget,” she said.
The $7.5 million added to the water authority’s budget for additional segment replacement work is “not nearly enough,” Coffey said.
“Can the public endure more of these (situations like the water outage in Orion Township)? No,” she said. “They are going to need us to do something. And we are going to have to figure out how to get more money to do something.”
Water use restrictions remain in place, and are helping
Residents in Orion Township, the village of Lake Orion and northern Auburn Hills were asked to restrict all water use, as drinking water pickup sites and portable toilets were set up throughout the communities.
Water towers in Orion Township and Auburn Hills were nearing depletion, but the reduced water usage was helping, officials said.
“I’ve already heard from a couple of restaurant owners in tears over how many tens of thousands of dollars they were going to lose on (Sunday, Mother’s Day) alone,” Orion Township Supervisor Chris Barnett said.
“It’s going to be very uncomfortable for our residents.”
Seniors and others in assisted-living facilities were evacuated out of the affected area on Sunday, Orion Township Fire Chief Ryan Allen said.
Barnett noted that the area has some 42 lakes, and Coffey confirmed that it’s safe for residents to use buckets of lake water to flush their toilets, so long as they are mindful that the water doesn’t contain sand or debris.
“People are going to need to get creative,” Barnett said.
Several schools and districts were closed on Monday, with Lake Orion Community Schools closed both Monday and Tuesday, along with businesses throughout the communities. At Great Lakes Crossing, restaurants and public bathrooms are closed, although other retailers chose to stay open.
The Free Press left a message on Monday with Aumovio, the spin-off of Continental’s automotive group sector. Its operations were not affected by the break, according to Crain’s Detroit Business, but the company asked employees to work remotely as it monitored the repairs.
GLWA has also sent out three water trucks that will provide one-gallon containers of water to each resident. They will be available at three locations:
Some 7,000 gallons of water had been distributed at the three locations through Sunday.
“Think about your neighbors, friends and family who are not able to drive to those water distribution sites and help each other out,” Oakland County health officer Kate Guzman said. “Because there are individuals in your community who are homebound and struggling with transportation barriers.”
Boil water advisories have been issued in the communities affected by the water main break.
Contact Keith Matheny: kmatheny@freepress.com. Detroit Free Press staff writer Frank Witsil contributed.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Auburn Hills water main break may leave residents without water for weeks
Reporting by Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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