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This Winter Has Not Been Kind to Kalamazoo's Water Pipes

Sehvilla Mann
/
WMUK

With winter far from over, the City of Kalamazoo has had dozens of water main breaks already this year, according to Public Services Director James Baker. As of Jan. 22 the city had had 28 main breaks. They range in severity from small leaks to a rupture that heaved up part of Paterson Street.

Baker says it's normal to have some main breaks in the winter, as the freeze-thaw cycle puts extra stress on buried pipes. While the number of breaks in the first few weeks of 2018 might seem extraordinary, Baker says that in the long run this year might not outpace the others. The city had about 88 main breaks in 2017, about 81 in 2016 and about 68 in 2015.

But Baker adds that the city’s older mains - the ones that date from the 1930s or earlier - are especially prone to breaking. The city has about 115 miles of those pipes.

Baker says if those mains are still in the ground in 20 years, the city could see the number of breaks skyrocket - from no more than 90 to more like 200 a year.

“If we hit the year 2040 and we have not replaced any of that, really we’ve have had a failure to plan at that point, and we’re really going to have some challenges meeting the impacts,” he said.

“I think if you see us get upwards of 150 main breaks in a year, that’s really going to have impacts on our budget,” he added.

The city raised water and sewer rates this year in part to help pay for eventual pipe replacement.

Kalamazoo is still advising water customers to run a thin stream from the tap to prevent pipes from freezing. Baker says that even with recent warmups, the frost in the ground is deep enough to threaten some service lines.

Sehvilla Mann joined WMUK’s news team in 2014 as a reporter on the local government and education beats. She covered those topics and more in eight years of reporting for the Station, before becoming news director in 2022.
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