EL PASO, TEXAS (KFOX14/CBS4) — Thousands of Northeast El Paso residents were left without water in January after a 36-inch pipe break, prompting El Paso Water to move forward with plans to replace aging pipes and prevent another major outage.
The utility held a meeting on Wednesday to update its board on improvement plans. El Paso Water said that during the January break, about 15 gallons of water were lost. Since then, the utility has been conducting studies aimed at preventing a similar failure.
Gilbert Trejo, VP of operations and technical services at El Paso Water, said one of the steps taken after the break was a metallurgical study completed by a local consulting company.
“One of the items that resulted from the report was the metallurgical study that was completed by a local consulting company that we hired, and they do an excellent work for us,” Trejo said.
Trejo said the study helped determine more details about the pipe’s condition and how it failed.
“So the pipe itself was found to be, not just corroded, we knew corrosion had led to it, but it matters, the type of corrosion and how the pipe failed to the mode of failure,” he said.
Trejo said newer pipes are built differently.
“New pipes are not designed this way anymore,” he said.
He said El Paso Water is taking additional steps to move toward non-corrosive pipe materials.
“And we’ve taken additional steps to really move towards non-corrosive pipe materials, whether it’s that long black pipe that people see like on the airway project, on the sewer side we go to fiberglass,” Trejo said. “So again, we’ve gone away from any pipe that has metal in it in any way.”
Trejo said that since the break in January, the utility has installed several pipe valves and has been in contact with customers about ongoing repairs.
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