KC Water says it's working to curb water main breaks that are common this time of year.
Winter months bringing cold weather brought an end to dozens of old, outdated pipes under Kansas City's streets, resulting in flooding and water loss.
"We have over 2,800 miles of water line in the city, over 476 miles of those are over 100 years old," said Wes Minder, the Kansas City director of water services.
The line that burst the day before New Year's near 17th and Main had been underground since the 1800s.
Minder says the city's repair team is halved - down 56 workers due to difficulties finding labor. He says that means not all lines can be repaired in a day.
"We have so many breaks, we are literally jumping from break to break to break," he said. "We want to isolate the breaks, get the breaks done, move on to the next one. Separate crews come back in and do the restoration."
Minder says maintenance took a back seat in years past, but a slow stream of rate increases has allowed his crews to get back on track and do more preventative repairs.
"We had 1,800 water main breaks a year, 10 years ago," he said. "Since then we've replaced 250 miles of water line or about 25 miles a year, we're down to about 700-800 water main breaks a year."
It's more than just replacing lines. Minder hopes to install more sensors that detect line breaks before they get bad. He also has plans to modernize the currently outdated outage reporting and tracking system.
"So that way future generations won't have the problems that we had a decade ago," Minder said.
