Odessa city officials are still investigating what caused a massive water line break that left the city without water for 48 hours last month. But they’ve shared one important detail: The water line was about 60 years old.
“Aging water systems are common throughout the country,” said Thomas Kerr, Odessa’s utilities director, during a press conference the day after the line broke. “It’s often difficult for municipalities to be able to afford to manage those systems as they age. That’s the situation we find ourselves in.”
The water outage in Odessa exposed the city to a reality that happens all over Texas and the nation — water supply systems have become increasingly more vulnerable to disasters.
In February, many Laredo residents had their water cut off due to a break in the 50-year-old pipes. In May, Bell County residents were asked to use 50% less water after a water leak. Last month, a water line break caused areas of College Station to flood, and officials said it was due to the dry conditions.
Last year, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a report that gave Texas a C- in the quality of its drinking water. The report said the state’s water is “mediocre [and] requires attention.”
The report notes the importance of addressing water quality and availability to meet expected rising demand because of population growth in the state. According to the report, Texas’ population is projected to grow by more than 1,000 people per day during the next five decades — from 29.7 million in 2020 to approximately 51.5 million by 2070.
The report also states that many wastewater systems aren’t resilient enough to withstand extreme events. According to the report, the number of sanitary sewer overflows more than doubled from 2,500 to nearly 6,000 between 2016 and 2019, and they’re a threat to Texas’ lakes, rivers and beaches.
Ken Rainwater, a professor of civil, environmental and construction engineering at Texas Tech University, said a lot of factors can cause critical infrastructure to fail, and in the case of water pipes, it could be anything from how old they are to what material they’re made from. Other factors are the conditions surrounding the pipes, including the area’s climate and whether they’re buried near high-traffic areas.
In an interview with the Odessa American, Kerr said 40% of the city’s pipes are made of cast iron and another 20% are made from iron-based materials. According to Rainwater, cast iron was widely available and used after World War II when a lot of cities were growing their infrastructure. Now, because of the way the material degrades as it ages, Rainwater said it’s not used when pipes are upgraded or repaired.
While it’s likely that Odessa has replaced some of its old pipes in the past, Rainwater said it’s to be expected that cities with older infrastructure will be surprised now and then with breaks and failures.
“We’ve learned that cast iron pipes have lives of about 50 years, so [Odessa] got past 60 years,” he said. “But it’s like you deciding, ‘How long am I going to wait to change the tires on my car?’”
Water boil notices are a good indicator of how troublesome a city’s water infrastructure is becoming. Rainwater said when a water system is shut down, it also takes time to start disinfecting and cleaning water again before it’s safe to use, which is typically why water boil notices are issued.
According to data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, 2021 was the worst year for water boil notices in the last decade, with 3,866 reported. The high number of reports could be linked to the winter storm last year, when more than 14.6 million Texans’ water supply was disrupted by frozen or burst pipes. During that time, 1,655 water boil notices were issued.
On average in the last 10 years, East Texas has experienced more water boil notices than any other area per year. TCEQ said only 12 of Texas’ 254 counties had no listed notices in the last decade. The agency did not have additional information about why that is, noting that the information available is self-reported by each city’s public water officials.
Smaller cities, bigger challenges
Keeping the water healthy is an important function of a city’s infrastructure, and it’s a challenge in places like Idalou, a town of about 1,815 residents about 150 miles north of Odessa.