CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Over the weekend, a massive sinkhole formed along N. Tancahua St causing traffic delays for many drivers, and also raising questions regarding the city's efforts to repair our underground waterlines.
The repairs to N. Tancuhua Street have been made, but the road will be shutdown until it can be paved in a week.
"These pipes aren't getting younger so we have to make up what we should've been replacing in the past, so we're kind of playing catch-up now," said Corpus Christi Director of Water Systems Wesley Nebgen.
Nebgen said the city's capital improvement program to replace underground water pipes is $70 million this year. He added that just a few years ago, $3 million a year was being spent on replacing aging water and waste water pipes around town.
This year, $40 million worth of waste water pipes are going to be installed, something that Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni said is well worth the price tag.
"It is expensive, but the payoff is worth it from a return on investment standpoint for the taxpayer, and it's much better for the environment," Zanoni said.
A few years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency reached a settlement with the city calling for Corpus Christi to make improvements to its sewer lines. It has six-and-a-half years to rehabilitate the 40 percent of its sewer system which has always seemed to backup and overflow.
"I always tell the folks that even if we didn't have that agreement with the federal government we need to be investing at this level anyway," Zanoni said. "So it's less of being responsible to that agreement but more about being responsible to the taxpayer."
So how does the city address water pipes, and figure out which ones to replace ahead of failure?
"What we try to do is take an approach of looking at historical failures on a pipe, or a section of pipe and using that as one of our key drivers on how we go about a replacement program," Nebgen said.
Nebgen said that cast-iron pipes, like the one that broke along Tancahua and Comanche Street, are high on the list to be considered for replacement.
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