Firefighters are equipped with computerized cue sheets to tell them which of the 9,157 hydrants in the District have enough water pressure to put out a fire.
The average water and sewer bill has gone up about 50 percent in just four years, to $65 a month for single-family homes. Unless there is federal regulatory relief, it may climb to $100 a month by the end of the decade.
The decrepit system has 1,300 miles of water pipe and 1,800 miles of sewers. The water pipes are being replaced at an average of 11 miles a year. At that rate, replacing them all will take more than 100 years.
There’s no money to do it any faster. And, Hawkins says, “if you did it much faster than that, you could paralyze the city in terms of traffic.”
* * *
A snowstorm had turned the District into a ghost town a couple of years ago when Hawkins trudged through the snow to check a break in a water main at 21st Street and New Hampshire Avenue.
The intersection isn’t far from several embassies, and a few foreign visitors came from a hotel on the corner to watch as snowplows dug down to find the leak’s source. Hawkins recalls telling the visitors that the old mains under New Hampshire Avenue burst fairly often. “They said: ‘You have pipes that were put in in the 1860s? We thought we had it bad in Ghana!’ ”
* * *
The good news? The District’s pipes are being replaced twice as fast as the average in other major water systems in America.
The gargantuan numbers tossed around during December’s Senate hearing as the cost of saving the country’s water and sewage systems have no more promise of connecting with the public than has the $7 trillion that transportation experts say should be spent to resurrect roads, bridges, aviation and transit in the next decade.
About $9.4 billion more per year is needed for water and sewer work between now and 2020, according to a study released last month by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Without that, many Americans should prepare for regular disruption of water service and a jump in contamination caused by sewage bacteria, the study said.
The price of water, always far below commodities like electricity and gasoline, can be expected to rise dramatically as the demand taxes the systems that deliver it, analysts agree.
Nationwide, an estimated 1.7 trillion gallons of water leaks from pipes each year before it can be put to use. About 900 billion gallons of raw sewage flows into waterways.
Those leaks and untreated flushes aren’t just a problem in creaking Eastern cities that date to colonial times. Oklahoma, which didn’t become a state until the 20th century, has estimated it needs to invest $82 billion in water and sewer infrastructure over the next 50 years.
“I remember when they used to consider us out in the newer states like Oklahoma as not having the infrastructure problems of older states,” Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) said, “but that’s not true anymore.”
Although suburbs that have appeared or expanded since World War II have newer systems, they’re showing age. Even in this relatively mild year in which there have been fewer breaks — more mains break when there are severe temperature swings — the Washington suburbs have had problems. There have been more than 1,440 leaks or breaks in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties this year. Fairfax County has had 300.
“People count on turning on the faucet and having clean water come out,” said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), chairman of the subcommittee on water. “Our nation’s water infrastructure is reaching a tipping point.”
But with the economy sputtering and Congress eager to slash a burgeoning deficit, selling Americans on the need to pay billions more in water bills or taxes to salvage a system they didn’t even know was breaking may be impossible.
“The customer base really doesn’t know,” Hawkins said. “Like when I turn on the faucet, what on Earth is needed to deliver that water? It’s like magic. And then it goes down the drain. It’s like magic again.”
* * *
Hawkins was awakened on a Friday night in October 2010 to news that water was erupting all over the place at Constitution Avenue and Ninth Street.
“When a water main breaks, all hell breaks loose because it’s under such high pressure,” he said. “We dug an original hole that wasn’t in the right place because at first you can’t really tell” where the break is — the water can work its way to the surface through any fissure.
Pressure from the 24-inch main buckled the pavement a foot high. Water flooded the basement of the Department of Justice. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History had to shut down the next day.
The torrent was unleashed by a water main that had been installed in the 1890s, when Grover Cleveland lived a few blocks away in the White House.
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