enior Staff Writer
Main breaks are a common yet dreaded reality in the capital city.
In some cases, they mean temporary disruptions in water service.
And in most cases, they mean digging up the city’s already deteriorating streets so crews can make repairs.
In the last two years, the city of Jackson has received reports of some 3,400 main breaks, including a recent one on Old Canton Road in Fondren.
Residents continue to be reminded of the breaks long after the lines have been patched, thanks to the utility cuts that are left behind.
These cuts are characterized by large, gaping holes filled with sand and gravel, which are occasionally blocked off by orange barrels.
To avoid these cuts and to potentially reduce the cost and number of breaks altogether, Jackson officials could turn to trenchless technologies to repair water mains and extend their useful lives.
Cities across the country have turned to trenchless technologies, which are less intrusive, less labor intensive and, in many cases, less expensive than traditional trenching.
These methods include lining the inside of existing pipes with epoxies that cure in place, directional drilling or pipe bursting.
With the latter method, special equipment is used to burst the existing pipe, and simultaneously pull in a new pipe behind it.
Jackson has used trenchless methods to repair sewer mains, but typically relies on trenching to replace water lines.
Trenching includes digging a trench, installing a new line and tying it into the water system. Trenching is also a method used to repair broken mains.
Crews were using trenching to finish up a main replacement project on Eastover Drive. The $1.13 million project includes installing a new water main underneath the roadway between Ridgewood Road and Lake Circle Drive, filling the trench and repaving the road. The result of the work will be better water service in the area, as well as fewer main breaks. The existing cast iron line is more than 50 years old and has been ravaged by breaks in recent years.
With trenchless methods, the Eastover project likely could have been cheaper.
Broken down, the project includes replacing between 5,000 and 5,500 feet of water main, at a cost of $205.45 per linear foot.
By comparison, the city of Fort Wayne spent $16.5 million in the last three years to replace some 30 miles of underground water pipeline through directional drilling.
The Indiana city was able to do the directional drilling because it used a HDPE pipe, a strong but flexible plastic pipe that can be used for water, wastewater and other purposes, according to Trenchlesstechnology.com.
The cost for the HDPE piping was approximately $104 a foot, about half of what Jackson is spending on the Eastover work.
A reduced cost could be welcome to Jackson, which currently needs about $450 million to upgrade and replace its aging water infrastructure.
A 2013 study conducted by Neel-Schaffer Engineering showed the city needed $405 million to upgrade its system. Based on inflation, those costs today would be around $445 million.
However, finding that money is a challenge. Water collections are down due to complications with the Siemens contract. The collections represent the main source of income available for water-related work.
Jackson has approximately 1,100 miles of underground water pipeline. Twenty percent of those pipelines are 100 years or older; 30 percent are 60 years or older; and another 30 percent are 40 years or older.
In the last two years, the city has averaged 4.9 main break reports a day. That number also includes the 301 main breaks that occurred during the winter freeze of early 2018.
Approximately $2 million was spent to repair those breaks.
Other cities are facing similar challenges, and see non-trenching technologies as an easy, affordable way to address them.
Chicago, for instance, launched two pilot programs designed to lessen “the impact the repairs have on water pipeline repair construction on the community and the environment at large.”
According to a September 2019 news release, the city is investigating “the use of cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) for the rehabilitation of water mains.”
The effort comes years after the Illinois city started using the same technology to repair broken sewer mains.
Through CIPP, a textile liner is coated with an epoxy and then inserted into a sewer or water line, where it hardens and sticks to the interior pipe wall, according to Flow-liner.com. That technology or similar replacement methods have been used in Jackson on sewer mains, but not on water pipes. Pipe bursting has also been used in Jackson, but only on sewer.
Questions remain as to whether those efforts could work in restoring Jackson’s water system.
With pipe bursting and CIPP, a temporary above-ground main would have to be used while the work is being done, according to James Stewart, an engineering consultant on the Eastover project.
Jackson Engineering Manager Charles Williams said the city would have to find out whether methods like CIPP and HDPE would be allowed under state Health Department guidelines.
“HDPE has been approved by the American Water Works Association since the 1990s, but it’s one of those things that if the city wanted to use it for water lines, we’d have to make sure that the health department is okay with using it,” he said.
Williams said other factors would also come into play, including whether the PH of the city’s water would impact CIPP or HDPE materials. “From what I can tell, because it’s approved by AWWA, HDPE is relatively safe and would probably be a good method. The CIPP, I don’t know,” said Williams. “I don’t have enough information on that.”
