L.A.'s dangerous game of triage as aging water system hits breaking point
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Set us as preferred The Los Angeles water system is so old — and money for replacements is exceedingly scarce — that officials are left playing a dangerous game of triage.They know huge swaths of the system are in desperate need of replacement.
But with limited time and money, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has no choice but to focus on the lines it believes are most likely to blow.Sometimes, it can get there before a massive leak.But as West Hollywood discovered this month, sometimes the pipes rupture well before help can arrive.The Westside has experienced the highest number of leaks across the city’s water distribution system over the past 10 years, according to the utility.Experts say the age of pipes, the corrosive soil they’re buried in and pressure changes in pipes that send water to hillside neighborhoods all contribute to breaks across the aging system.
California Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood will remain closed for an undetermined amount of time while crews repair pipe and the road itself after a major trunk line ruptured Thursday.This region was the location for the two biggest ruptures of the last few years, including a 17-million gallon leak in West Hollywood last week and a roughly 10-million gallon rupture that flooded Westwood and damaged parts of UCLA in 2014.Those areas both had pipes that were more than 100 years old.But the rest of the system isn’t much better.More than 30% of DWP’s mainlines are more than 80 years old and at least 6% of them are considered high priority for replacement.
In a 2018 assessment, more than 50% of DWP’s trunk line segments were more than 65 years old and 11% were more than 100 years old.The utility prioritizes replacement projects based on a variety of factors including the age of the line, leak history and the consequences of failure in a pa...