The city is poised to at least double its annual spending on water line repairs, citing two years of pipe breaks and leaks driven in part by ongoing drought conditions.
Houston lost nearly 20 billion gallons of water from January to August of this year, according to records obtained through a public information request. That represents about $75 million in potential revenue for the city’s water utility system.
City Council on Wednesday approved six emergency purchases related to water infrastructure maintenance totaling $21 million. In the previous five fiscal years, the city spent $9 to $10 million annually to repair broken water pipes, city records show.
Such emergency purchases are common during a drought, when extreme heat and dryness put pressure on the pipes around shrinking soils, Houston Public Works spokesperson Erin Jones said.
In June, record temperatures and a significant drop in rainfall prompted the city to issue a drought advisory — which remains ongoing — asking residents to limit outdoor watering and routinely check for water leaks. The last time Houston issued such restrictions was during a more severe state-wide drought in 2011, Jones said.
“All those warmer months without rain in April and May, that’s causing like a domino effect of more heat and more breakage,” she said. “It’s not as bad as what it was in 2011, but it’s important to remember that we were and still are in a drought.”
Houston has an aging underground infrastructure, Mayor Sylvester Turner said during Wednesday’s council meeting. Combined with more extreme weather conditions brought by climate change, spending more money on contractors to fix the main lines is unavoidable, he said.
“We were being overwhelmed, and so we ended up bringing on more contractors to address the situation. That has helped, and it does come with an expense,” Turner said. “We have to recognize the changing conditions and the infrastructure that’s going to be required in order to mitigate more water main leaks.”
From January to May, the amount of water lost to leaks each month nearly doubled, from 1.8 billion gallons to 3.1 billion gallons, data show. The largest water losses occurred in March, April and May, when they accounted for more than 20 percent of the city’s total treated water, slightly less than the 25 percent at the height of the 2011 drought.
That’s a lot of water, and getting the pipes fixed is not just sensible environmentally it’s also a good idea financially. I think the city has been a bit lax on this historically because we’re in a pretty wet climate and generally haven’t had to worry about having enough water. It’s very clear now that that is not a safe assumption any more.
One more thing:
Councilmember Mike Kubosh said the city should ask the state for more support, noting Texas was to receive an estimated $35 billion over five years from the infrastructure bill passed by Congress in November 2021.
“Some of the cities have crumbling infrastructure, like ours,” Kubosh said. “Thirty billion dollars just sitting there…It’s the people’s money. It doesn’t make sense that they’re not using it.”
By all means, feel free to pick up the phone and call Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and tell them that. I wish you the best of luck in that endeavor.
83 millions gallons lost per day due to leaks. WTF.