Spate Of West Side Water Main Breaks Prompt Aging Pipes Concern

UPPER WEST SIDE, MANHATTAN — It will likely be weeks before the city figures out what caused three water mains to break on Manhattan's west side within just days of one another, cutting water for hundreds of New Yorkers and flooding streets and subways, officials said Tuesday.

Sections of pipes involved in the breaks — one from Union Square and two from the Upper West Side — have been sent to a laboratory for analysis since they ruptured on three separate days in the last week, a spokesperson with the Department of Environmental Protection told Patch.

The lab will take several weeks to determine the cause of the breaks, the spokesperson said.

The news comes as elected officials, activists and even the MTA has called on the city to prevent the damaging water main breaks by investing in its aging infrastructure.

"This is the second time this week our customers have been denied service for too lengthy a period because of a major city water main break that flooded our system," Senior Vice President of Subways Sally Librera said after the most recent break on Sunday.

"We hope this latest incident will spur quicker shut-off response times by the city and a review of its aging system in hopes of avoiding similar situations moving forward."

The most recent water main break, which ruptured on Central Park West near 103rd Street around 7:30 a.m., shut down the city's A, C and D trains for hours as transit officials scooped water out of the subway system.

It came nearly a week after another water main break on the Upper West Side shut down a dozen blocks near Lincoln Center and left the MTA sucking 500,000 gallons of water out of the 1, 2 and 3 line for 12 hours.

The third water main break on Manhattan's west side that week broke near Union Square on Thursday and left 125 residents and businesses without water for several hours. It was repaired before any flooding.

Despite the pushback surrounding the three breaks, though, DEP officials insisted that they are already making significant investments in the city's water system.

New York City has had 6.5 water main breaks for every 100 miles of water main so far this fiscal year — around the same amount as the last several years — compared to the average of 25 breaks for every 100 miles of water main in the rest of the country, DEP spokesperson Edward Timbers said. New York City is home to 6,800 miles of water mains.

"DEP far outperforms the rest of the country because we invest about $400 million annually to build new mains — that’s about a mile of new main every week of the year," he said.

Timbers did not immediately respond to a question about whether it was typical to have three of those six or so yearly breaks happen within one week.

The MTA also said it is investing in its systems to make sure the subways don't need to be shut down because of water main or street flooding.

The agency has cleared more than 80,000 street grates and sealed more than 8,200 leaks as part of its Subway Action Plan, which was introduced in 2017, officials said.