Fort Lauderdale's Water Main Problems Continue
FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) - Another day, another leak.
Just as a water main break under the South Fork of the New River was fixed another broke.
This time in Rio Vista, just a few blocks from where all those sewer problems were in December.
"They discovered we had water valve on an 8-inch water main pipe that was damaged," said City Spokesman Chaz Adams.
Julian Siegel and his family live on the North Fork of the New River.
Their boat has not left the dock for weeks because of the 7 sewage breaks since December, spewing millions of gallons of raw sewage into the waterways.
"If we could go 6 months or 3 months without a break it would be a blessing. But we're not going a week, we're not going three days without another break," he said.
He's frustrated by the health concerns and the fact that some money allocated for system maintenance gets diverted. "The problem we've had historically is the city receives the money, it's earmarked for infrastructure upgrades and repairs and somehow it goes to balance the budget."
District One Commissioner Heather Moraitis tells us the practice of diverting funds will stop after this year — and money collected for the water and sewer fund from utility bills will stay put for system maintenance.
"Right after about the time of the recession, there was a policy change on the city commission to allow the city manager to transfer about 20 million a year from the water-sewer enterprise fund, into the general fund of the city."
Looking back, the city completed a major sewer project in 20-11 and planned to continue, then the recession hit.
"We had planned on continuing the second phase of that project, but with the recession, we really just stopped those plans. The second phase of that project would have been repairing and replacing all the breaks we are currently seeing," Commissioner Moraitis said.
Meanwhile construction is well under way to replace that 7 and a half mile sewer line that's broken several times. It's part of a larger, 600 million dollar project. "Over the next 5 years we are replacing about 60 miles of water mains, water lines, over the next 5 years I believe it's about 118 miles of sewer lines."
The priority right now is replacing that 7 and a half mile sewer line that's been breaking. City officials say that should be complete in 18 months.