City Of Tulsa Working To Repair Numerous Water Main Breaks

Water main breaks have been popping up all over town and that's causing a headache for the Tulsa Water Department. The breaks can take anywhere from a couple of hours to whole days to fix.

The breaks are happening all over Tulsa. Officials say they had 16 breaks Sunday and several more since midnight. Crews have repaired ten of those broken lines and are working on the rest.

Sometimes the breaks cause crews to cut off water to nearby businesses and homes, making it quite the inconvenience for those living and working in the areas.

Broken Arrow resident, Glenn Horst said, "I just showed up and it's closed. I guess the water main has everything shut down in this area, I guess."

Water main breaks all across town, including one at 21st and Garnett, had people turning away from local businesses Sunday and Monday.

"I bet this is a lot of inconvenience for this whole block,” Horst said.

An inconvenience Water Distribution Section Manager, Rick Caruthers, said is hard to avoid in a town like Tulsa.

Rick Caruthers, Water Distribution Section Manager "It's just, we've got a massive system, we've got 22 hundred miles of water line, and some of that line is 75 years old,” he said. "It's hot, it's August, this is a busy time for us. Fortunately, this August has been pretty mild up to the last few days."

The last few days just so happen to be some of the hottest parts of summer, with temperatures hitting near triple digits, but the city said it's working on a project to fix the overall system.

"The city of Tulsa water department is just beginning an asset management program which is going to look at all the breaks we've had. It's going to go in and identify the areas that we need to go in and replace those lines,” Caruthers said.

The programs would call for replacing about 20 miles of line a year.