I think the "experts" are just babbling nonsense, as the increase of blowouts seems multiannual and lineal. Apparently the water infrastructure (or its maintenance) is fast deteriorating. But it is nice to see a Water Department that keeps records, so unlike Israel.
The Department of Water and Power (see pic) has recorded 34 “major blowouts” in L.A.’s water system since Sept. 1 in which streets were flooded and pavement buckled. By contrast, the city had only 21 for all of September 2008, 17 for all of September 2007 and 13 in September 2006.
Experts said a prime suspect should be the city’s recent decision to ration water by allowing sprinklers to run only on Mondays and Thursdays. They say that if more water flows through the system on Mondays and Thursday when people are watering their lawns and then pressure suddenly drops on other days, it could put added stress on already aging pipes.
“You made a change in operations…and now you get an anomalous number of failures. To me that is an 'ah hah' moment,” said Richard Little, director of the Keston Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy at USC.
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I mentioned this here a few months ago, but the neighboring city of Phoenix, AZ has had a series of minor floods from its sewers backing up. A city inspection team crawled into one of the larger pipes and found that the entire top half of the pipe had been eaten away by an acidic gas produced by the sewage, leaving nothing but an earthen arch. Similar discoveries were made using fiber optic cameras to inspect other smaller pipes.
Part of the article dealt with the question of how often such pipes should be replaced, and the best official answer came from the San Francisco EPA office, which recommended that 2% of all sewage pipes in a system should be replaced every year, which leads to a 50-year expected lifespan for all types of pipe.
As part of the story the author mentioned that many cities across the country were having to raise their sewerage rates in order to pay for increased maintenance they had under-budgeted for. This under-budgeting for regular replacement of parts was especially common in cities that have grown rapidly in the wake of WW2, as such cities generally had new pipes and facilities and could put of thinking about regular pipe replacement for several decades after the systems were built.
I would be interested to find out if the pipes failures are occurring in areas of LA that are around 50- years old, or if they are occurring in areas that predate ww2. If the first option is true, then LA is just dealing with the long term hangover of its explosive growth in the past. If the second is true then it could be the sign of organizational decay.
I think this is the article I read in the Phoenix New Times.
Here is a simple 8-page summary of what is happening in Phoenix's sewers.
Phoenix is paradise.
What the hell? I didn't expect that response from you.
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