In late July, serious water main failures cut off water service for days to thousands of residents and businesses in Waterbury. When the water was turned back on, a boil water advisory took effect.
While the Waterbury Water Department scrambled to fix the main, Water Superintendent, Ramon Esponda, said his staff told him about a superstition among water department employees.
“Usually when they get a new superintendent, that pipe breaks off pretty quickly,” Esponda said. “And I was here for a month, and it had broken. So, they were waiting for it to happen. It seems to be like a ‘welcome to Waterbury’ ritual for the new superintendents.”
The first water main failure was not unexpected; but then a second water main failed, both happened-on Tompkins Street.
Thousands of homes went without water for a few days. This came months after a more serious water main break happened in December on Thomaston Avenue, during a bitterly cold winter.
That main break cut off water service for most of the city.
Esponda and city officials say they’re working on fixing the pipes and have made progress in doing so.
They pointed to a variety of reasons as to why the water system has experienced multiple failures.
Some of those reasons include, road salt accidentally seeping through pavement and corroding water pipes, to decades of deferred maintenance.
Mayor Paul Pernerewski said the Tompkins Street pipes that failed are partly made of concrete. Road salt, he said, ended up getting in the concrete, which then corroded some of the steel bars inside, known as rebar, which is used to reinforce the pipes. Older water pipes throughout the city are made of cast iron.
Pernerewski said winter weather can also cause problems and pointed to what happened last December.
“We have probably about 40 breaks a year throughout the system,” Pernerewski said. “That's just normal. This is New England, so you have a lot of ground frost, a lot of shifting of the ground, which causes pipes most of the time; you find them breaking in the wintertime because of that.”
The age of some of the pipes is also an issue. Some of the water pipes were installed in the early 1900’s, others were installed in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
According to Pernerewski some of the main breaks are due to the fact that pipes across the city haven’t had as much maintenance performed over the last few decades.
Pernerewski said he doesn’t know how much it will ultimately cost for a long term solution, but said the city has already spent around $31 million in the last year on upgrading the pipe system.
Now the city is looking for additional state and federal aid to help retrofit pipes, which they say is an expensive process.
Rep. Jahana Hayes, who grew up in Waterbury and represents the city, said she’s already requested around $5 million in federal funding to help upgrade pipes throughout the city.
But Hayes said she’s concerned about the federal government canceling grant funding. Hayes was referring to recent media coverage on the government pulling funding from blue states that voted against President Donald Trump in 2024.
“I just know that it'll be more work, and we have to fight harder for it. And that's something that I'm willing to do,” Hayes said.
There are also other monetary costs that come with water main failures in the city.
Business owners such as Anthony D’Amelio, who owns Verdi Restaurant, said he lost a lot of valuable business when his restaurant lost water due to the service disruptions as a result of the main break in July.
So, D’Amelio is thinking of a solution if it happens again.
“I'm going to try to look into water tankers, if there's any way to bring in water from the outside, that we could hook into the building,” D’Amelio said. “I just don't know how expensive that would be, but I'm going to make some calls.”
Many other residents complained about the water service disruptions , but Esponda said the water infrastructure of the city is similar to other cities in New England.
Esponda said some of those municipalities are facing similar issues as Waterbury, which not only faces pipe issues, but also has to replace valves which in some cases, haven’t been turned for a long time.
“Older cities like New Britain, Waterbury, Worcester; places where we had a lot of industry and things were running, people didn't exercise their valves, so they may have been positioned in the same position for many years,” Esponda said. “So, they get frozen. So, when you try to turn them, they break.”
