Residents on Bellevue’s Ward Avenue said they have been without water or with cloudy brown water roughly eight times over the last year.
The cause? Water main breaks.
The most recent incident occurred on Aug. 13. Ward Avenue resident Joey Lauer, who has lived there for about 13 years, said the break happened roughly 10 feet from a break that occurred last winter. Workers fixed it, but another line next to it began leaking. Lauer was told there was not enough crew to stay and fix the new leak, so residents were left without water for the night.
Workers didn’t return to the area until the following afternoon, at which point residents on Ward were without water for roughly 24 hours.
Ward Avenue runs from Bellevue Beach Park up to Lincoln Road.
“We call the water district; they don’t have any answers,” he said. “They don’t know what’s going on. If you have a leak, if you go to their website, it says there are no leaks. There’s no issue. They never tell us we need to boil our water if it is safe to drink. When the water does come back on, it’s coming out brown.”
According to Sara Sgantas, communications and public outreach manager for the Northern Kentucky Water District, the district uses a prioritization model for water main replacement, and Ward Avenue is a high-priority water main to replace.
In the last year, Sgantas said there have been three water main breaks on Ward Avenue. If there are water main breaks on other nearby streets, Sgantas said water pressure can be impacted until that break is isolated.
“As water main replacement is a costly process, we are actively working on applying for grants and low-interest loans to cover the costs for replacement,” Sgantas said. “The Northern Kentucky Water District is a special-purpose government entity and not-for-profit. Our team works diligently to meet our customer and system needs while balancing fair and reasonable rates.”
John Gibbson moved to the street in 2016 and said he doesn’t recall the breaks being as big of an issue as it has been in the last two years.
“It’s kind of gotten to the point where there will be days where I’m like, ‘All right, am I going to wake up with water or no water today,’” Gibbson said.
What does Northern Kentucky’s water main infrastructure look like?
Sgantas said the water district is a culmination of various mergers of over 18 independent water systems throughout Northern Kentucky over the past 80 years.
The water district has over 1,327 miles of water main in its system with many parts dating back to the 1800s. Sgantas said in 1998, the water district started a program to provide a process for identifying candidates for water main rehabilitation and replacement within the service area. As a result, it uses available funds to ensure mains requiring replacement are prioritized.
Thinking back to the break on Aug. 13, Gibbson said it looked like trying to plug holes in a sinking boat or playing whack-a-mole.
“This most recent time that I recall was kind of that scenario where they fixed it, and for a brief moment, we had water,” Gibbson said. “The neighbors were all texting each other, like, ‘Hey, do you have water? I have water.’ Then, 30 or 40 minutes later, the water was gone again, and it was because that second part had broken.”
One morning, when Gibbson woke up and found his house had no water, he drove to Kroger and bought water bottles and gallon jugs of water and has kept them as reserves.
“It’s kind of a matter of you can’t count on the reliability in the service,” he said.
Ward Avenue resident Jake Kelley said that he has had issues with water main breaks since moving into his house in 2019.
“There’s been three (breaks) just in the past couple weeks where we lost water,” Kelley said. “That was super frustrating. I mean, it’s just been like constant issues. There doesn’t seem to be any real plans to fix it, which is frustrating, to say the least.”
Kelley said he made the mistake of running his shower one morning after a break, and brown water clogged his shower head.
Sgantas said field crews attempt to flush out discolored water through hydrants after break repairs, but running cold water at full force for 20-30 minutes can also help flush the discolored water from the lines.
Aside from losing water, all three residents said the lack of communication from the water district has been the most frustrating part.
“There are people in this world, and there are people in this country who don’t have fresh water and for much longer, and that’s a crime, but a day and a half with very little communication is very problematic,” Gibbson said.
Sgantas said that the water district does not contact residents when a water main break occurs. She said when the field crew is fixing a water main break, their priority is to find, isolate and fix the break in order to resume water service.
“Our team often doesn’t know how long each break will take to repair as they are unique and there can be a variety of challenges (location of break, how big the break is, how large the pipe is, etc.),” she said. “Our account services team can see where known water main breaks are being fixed, but they wouldn’t be able to provide a timeline because of the challenges faced by our field crew.”
As for issuing a boil advisory, Sgantas said if the district were to issue an advisory, they would notify impacted customers through website notifications, press releases, signs and door hangers.
She said the district’s lab runs tests for evidence of contamination following a water main break to ensure that the water is safe to drink.
Lauer said that when the breaks occur, the roads get patched, and the repairs deteriorate faster than regular pavement. He said down the street, there was a water main break during the winter that wiped out roughly 30 feet of sidewalk. Lauer said the water district replaced it, and it looked great. Then another break occurred about 20 feet away, and now the road sits higher than the sidewalk that had just been replaced.
“It just doesn’t seem responsible to just keep patching it instead of fixing it so that we can get reliable water systems,” Lauer said.
Kelley agreed. He said he’s not an engineer, but whatever the water district is currently doing is not the right answer.
“Repairs are often less expensive than full replacements and it would be cost prohibitive to replace an 18 foot section of water main every time there is a break, especially if the break can be repaired,” Sgantas said. “A water main break is considered an emergency. We don’t know when or where they are going to happen. The resources, materials and time to replace a water main versus repairing a water main break are substantially different. Our goal is to restore water as quickly as possible to ensure water quality and delivery to our customers.”
Additionally, she said replacing the entire section of water main causes more destruction of roadways and right of ways. Sgantas said the water district likes to coordinate water main replacements, when they can, with public entities during their road replacement projects to minimize costs and to minimize impact to the public.
Breaks are not unique to Bellevue. Sgantas said water main breaks happen in all of the district’s service areas.
She said they can be caused by several factors, including environmental conditions that result in ground movement (frozen, dry ground, or overly wet, saturated ground), soil corrosivity, age, construction work, water pressure, etc.
Sgantas said the water district has on-call crews 24/7 to aid in breaks. To report a water main break in your area, call the water district’s main number at (859) 578-9898 or visit its website here.
