Frequent reports of water main breaks and media coverage of a spectacular water spout in Green Tree notwithstanding, local water authorities believe they're maintaining the viability of their aging infrastructures.

	V.W.H. Campbell, Post-Gazette
	Westmoreland County water authority crews dig out around a pipe Wednesday to get to a watermain break and replace the damaged pipe. The break occurred in front of a residence on Kennedy Avenue, Export.

"It's not excessive this summer," said Sharon Bruno, 53, a spokeswoman for West View Water Authority, which covers 30 Pittsburgh-area municipalities, most of them in the greater North Hills. "We had 17 [breaks] in June and 20 this time [July]. Out of 753 miles of water main, that's not too bad."

Water main breaks are as inevitable as rain at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, despite millions of dollars water authorities spend upgrading their systems.

Pennsylvania American Water Co., for example, has been spending $10 million a year on replacement of pipe in a coverage area that includes 40 South Hills communities and nine city wards.

But a national industry group says that might not be enough for Pittsburgh or any other aging city over the next few decades as pipes reach the end of their projected life spans.

"Now's the time to start talking to the public about the need to replace the infrastructure," said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the American Water Works Association, a technical and professional society that does education on water issues. "It's not going to go away, and the longer you put it off, the larger the problem you're going to have eventually."

Perhaps, but any kind of complete, systematic replacement is, in the eyes of officials from Pittsburgh area authorities, impossible.

"[The cost] would be astronomical, and it would be a needless expense," West View's Bruno said.

"Most of [our] area is not even 50 years old, though there are sections in Ross that are 75 or more years old."

Jay Lucas, network manager for Pennsylvania American, estimated it would cost $1 billion to replace his entire system, which includes 1,500 miles of main in the South Hills and city wards. "We wouldn't look at ever replacing the whole system."

The American Water Works Association's doomsday attitude stems from a 2001 study called "Dawn of the Replacement Era," which looked at 20 utility companies' needs for repair and replacement of drinking water infrastructure.

It cited the fact that three different types of pipe installed in different eras will be reaching their life expectancy over the next 20 to 30 years.

That includes the durable cast iron pipe installed late in the 19th century up through the lighter-weight and less durable pipe called transite that was used in the post-World War II era. Now pipe is either ductile iron or plastic, primarily the former here, expected to last 100 years.

But old doesn't mean worn out, said Greg Tutsock, executive director of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, the city's main provider.

Pennsylvania-American's Lucas agrees.

"We don't generally replace because we think it's bad pipe," Lucas said. "We ask is it sized correctly? Do we have expansion or growth coming up? The other thing we look at is its breakdown history. That's a good indicator."

The company also tries to work with municipalities when they are redoing major portions of a street to do pipe replacement at the same time.

The Pittsburgh authority has some 150-year-old pipe in its 1,200-mile system. "[But] the fact that a line is old doesn't mean at a certain age you have to take it out immediately," Tutsock said. "You look at the history of breakage. You may have to replace pipe because something bigger is needed.

"What we look at is that the city is changing from an industrial city to a service city so the demands are significantly different," he said. "We have to look [to see] if what we're installing is adequate for now and 50 years out. It's not just a matter of replacing line with the same size line."

In 2004, the authority had 259 water main breaks.

The authority's current capital budget calls for spending about $2 million a year in each of the next three years on major replacement alone. That does not include new lines that may be needed for development.

It also recently completed some $6.5 million worth of replacement and repairs through the state's Pennvest program, which offers low-interest loans for infrastructure improvements. Those projects were in Squirrel Hill, Greenfield and Westwood.

Additional replacements -- $3 million to $3.5 million worth -- are made annually from the operating budget.

The authority gets good marks from professor Dave Dzombak, an environmental engineer focusing on water within Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

"I think Pittsburgh is like many other cities with old infrastructure that has been and will continue to see failures in parts of it," he said. "I think Pittsburgh took a big step forward when it formed the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority [in 1984] to get much better organized both financially and institutionally to approach maintenance and long-term and short-term replacement in a more systematic way."

West View's Bruno, executive secretary to executive director Daniel Daugherty, said the authority spent $1.4 million on water line replacement last year. That amounted to about two miles of pipe but the distance covered varies each year according to conditions.

"There are so many factors that come into the cost," she said. "You have to open ground, you might run into other utilities, you might have to do excavation of rock. You can be on Perry Highway and have an easy job or be on older streets, where there is infrastructure in the roadway."

And amid planned replacements, local authorities always will be attending to repairs of broken water mains.

What causes them? Every water specialist has his own theories and all may play a role. They range from shifts in the earth due to freezing and thawing in the winter, to ground expansion in the summer, to the stress of trucks running over pipes in streets, to topography and pipe that simply has worn out from the accumulation of stress over the ages.

University of Pittsburgh associate engineering professor Leonard Casson believes the stress of increased demand is the major cause of summer breaks.

"It's kind of like pulling on a rubber band," said Casson, who specializes in water and wastewater issues.

Water tanks and reservoirs are depleted faster, particularly in the evening when people come home from work, and then water must be pumped back into them at a faster clip to maintain necessary reserves.

"But, [like a rubber band], sometimes a weak section or some pipe stresses on it and you end up with a pipe breaking."