Winter water main breaks up in Joliet

City listed 79 breaks in January and February, but officials say long-term trend is good

The number of water main breaks this winter are more than double from a year ago, although city officials say they are making long-term progress in controlling the rate of water loss in Joliet.

The city loses about 35% of the water going through the system each year, a rate that needs to be brought down to 10% to meet standards required for the plan to hook up to Lake Michigan water in 2030.

Breaks in aging water mains, some a century old, are one significant source of water losses, and the first two months of 2021 were not good.

The city had 76 water main breaks through February, up from 29 in the same period a year ago, Utilities Director Allison Swisher said in a recent update for the Joliet City Council Public Services Committee.

Swisher noted the weather through February was “not the best for our old infrastructure” compared to a mild winter a year ago.

However, she said, the trend in water main breaks is downward.

The city had 85 breaks in the same period in both 2019 and 2018. In 2014, there were 131 breaks in the first two months of the year.

Joliet since 2017 has been replacing 1% of its 665 miles of water mains each year and will increase that to 3% in 2022, when the city expects to spend $30 million on water main construction.

The city had two major incidents at the beginning of February.

Eight breaks in a concentrated area along Fairview Avenue shut off water to several neighborhoods. A 1920s-era water main running under the Des Plaines River broke at about the same time leading to an estimated loss of 6 million to 10 million gallons of water.