With the city of Waterbury back on its feet, officials pledged Friday to fight for millions of dollars in federal funding to pay for the damage from a recent water main break and then upgrade the system so that it is strengthened for the future.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal warned that other communities with aging infrastructure could run into the same problems that cut off water in Waterbury for nearly a week and wreaked havoc by closing schools and restaurants.
“It could happen anywhere,” Blumenthal said Friday at the city’s water headquarters. “We have aging infrastructure all across the state of Connecticut. … What happened in Waterbury is a warning to every municipality that the weaknesses in that infrastructure need to be anticipated and assessed before they cause this kind of perfect storm.”
He added, “Every municipality across the state ought to be aware: it could happen to you.”
In the coming months, Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes of Wolcott, and other members of the Connecticut delegation will be fighting in Washington, D.C. for federal money as part of a revolving fund for drinking water. One of the problems is that President Donald J. Trump and Republicans have called for cutting water funds, but Democrats vowed to try to restore the funding.
“There’s no free water, just like there is no free lunch,” Blumenthal told reporters.
In the short term, city officials are preparing to pay an estimated $2.5 million for the problems of the past three weeks, including work by contractors, police officers, and other officials involved in restoring service to the city. The work involved replacing huge concrete pipes that are 36 inches wide and replacing three large valves that can cost as much as $200,000 each.
“The city has water today. Everyone has water,” said Bradley Malay, the city’s water superintendent. “There is nothing inexpensive about this.”
While saying that exact totals are difficult to quantify, about 10% of the city’s water infrastructure is from 1920 or earlier, Malay said. Various pipes have been replaced at times through the years across the city in a patchwork system of solving immediate problems. Statewide, some of the oldest pipes go back as far as the 1800s.
Waterbury Mayor Paul K. Pernerewski Jr. said the city has bond funds that may be available to get the repairs started in the short term.
Looking ahead, the city needs to replace 10 major valves and related piping at a cost of $5 million to $6 million, officials said.
Waterbury has three projects on the revolving fund list to obtain funding for the installation of storage tanks for $6.5 million, a pump project for $4.7 million, and water transmission upgrades for $12.3 million.
“I don’t know how those projects are relevant to what has to be done immediately, but you’re the better judge of how those applications should go forward,” Blumenthal said to Waterbury officials seated at a table with him. “We’re here as a delegation to say we’re going to be behind you.”
Hayes, who represents parts of Waterbury as U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro represents other sections of the city, said the process can be slow-moving but officials would be willing to accept “$100,000 here or $1 million there” as the money comes in.
“Federal dollars move at a glacial place,” said Hayes, who joined the meeting via a remote video connection.
Hayes noted that many residents do not think often about infrastructure because it is often out of sight and out of mind.
“Underground, you can’t see the pipes,” she said. “You don’t really know what’s going on, and it’s not something you typically think about.”
The problems in Waterbury were so extensive that some residents could not brush their teeth or take a shower. It remained unclear Friday whether residents might be reimbursed for the bottled water that they used during the water crisis.
The problem started in a small way and then got progressively worse because of the aging infrastructure.
Malay told reporters that the issue began with a problem on Dec. 11 with a 12-inch pipe, but then “two 36-inch pipes caved in on themselves.”
The city experiences as many as 30 to 40 breaks in water mains every year, officials said, but the cascading and interconnected problems recently were unprecedented.
Christopher Keating can be reached at [email protected]