ST. PETE BEACH — The city is just now getting a handle on a number of potholes created by lateral reclaimed water lines throughout the island “exploding” from what the public works director called a “systematic failure” of the underground water pipes connected to main transmission lines.
During a June 14 meeting, Public Works Director Mike Clarke told city commissioners the city has around 3,300 reclaimed water connections, “or essentially one per property; and, it’s not just private properties, it’s commercial properties, our public properties, our parks, and street ends, they all have reclaimed water connections.”
He said that a couple of years ago, Public Works and city staff “began to sense that there’s something going on here. The reclaimed water system is just giving us a fit, the pipes are basically exploding.
“We didn’t really see it for what it was, because it was sort of a slow creep,” Clarke told commissioners. “One day we realized, ‘Wait a minute, we have a systematic failure taking place here, that’s what going on.’”
The city initiated a program to replace what is believed to be faulty reclaimed water lines installed by a now-defunct company. “Previous to that we had been replacing the reclaimed water laterals as part of our larger projects,” Clarke said. “There are several hundred locations where we have successfully replaced these over the last couple of years.”
The public works director told commissioners the department will continue to try to replace all reclaimed water laterals in future paving programs. “We will still have these pop-ups, these explosions from pipes that just break without announcing themselves. We will still have to contend with that,” Clarke said.
Commissioner Mark Grill questioned why the commission was not informed about revised plans to give priority to replacing reclaimed laterals as part of repaving projects.
Clarke explained the project of replacing malfunctioning reclaimed water lines was proceeding according to plan, until the annual paving program kicked in and along with it a joint plan to also replace an additional 149 reclaimed water lines.
“We have one asset, which is our contractor, so we shifted priorities off unforeseen breaks and moved the priority to the 149 laterals. That project will end this week and next week, the list of 14 unforeseen locations will be handled,” Clarke said.
He told commissioners when it comes to public works, project timetables and issues change sometimes day to day.
City Manager Alex Rey said “we have a strategic approach to the problem … The delays of the last couple of months get attributed to diverting the effort to the big program as opposed to the little ones, but starting June 14 we are starting to address the small ones and have a process to catch up.”
The city’s goal is 60 days, Rey said.