The WSSC promised Monday not to again skip inspections of suburban Maryland’s water pipes — some of which could have been improperly installed, like the recently burst water main on River Road — because of budget woes.
Earlier this decade, a lack of funds led the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, the water utility for Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, to cut inspections of its larger pipes.
But after a series of spectacular breaks, including the December rupture of a 5 1/2-foot water main on River Road that trapped 15 motorists and passengers in their vehicles, the utility has stepped up its inspections and hopes to have all 77 miles of pipes 48 inches and bigger inspected by 2013.
“We do not intend to let this [inspection] program suffer due to budgetary issues, as has happened in the past,” Chief of Engineering Gary Gumm told the Montgomery County Council’s Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment Committee.
The WSSC plans to inspect nearly 11 miles of larger pipe in the College Park and the Derwood areas this fiscal year. By contrast, it inspected just four miles of pipe between fiscal 2001 and 2006.
Larger pipe inspections take several months and cost $100,000 per mile, a WSSC spokesman said. Pipes are emptied of water, and inspectors enter the pipes and use sonar and other equipment to look for cracks and other problems.
A recent report by a consulting company found that the 66-inch water main on River Road broke because it was in direct contact with rock, and the contractor who put in the pipe 44 years ago had not used a required 4-inch gravel bed during installation.
Gumm said it was clear that WSSC inspectors were on-site when the River Road pipe was installed and allowed it to be completed without the necessary gravel bed. And he said there could be other pipes that were improperly installed.
“There’s a lot of rock in Montgomery County,” he said.
Gumm said the WSSC should continue its plan to have all of its larger pipes inspected by 2013, and to install acoustic fiber-optic devices in those pipes that can warn the utility’s engineers of pending breaks.
The utility already has installed monitoring devices in 17 miles’ worth of pipe, Gumm said.
Council Vice President Roger Berliner, D-Potomac/Bethesda, said the county’s residents were worried that pipes may break before they are inspected.
But Gumm said the WSSC has prioritized the list of which pipes are inspected based on which ones are most likely to pose a danger of bursting.
Burst pipe rated a 2
The 66-inch water main that burst on River Road in December had been inspected by the WSSC in 1998. At the time, inspectors found cracks in the pipe, which was incorrectly installed in 1965, said WSSC’s chief engineer, Gary Gumm. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst, the inspectors said the pipe was a 2 and needed to be inspected again in 2008, Gumm said. It wasn’t.
