Water Division Data

Water Main Restoration

The Water Division is charged with providing an uninterrupted supply of high quality drinking water to City residents and businesses. 

The Water Main Restoration Dashboard tracks and displays the percentage of water main restorations taking less than 8 hours to put back in service after isolating the main for repairs. 

The Water Division has a goal of restoring 80% of water mains called out of service for emergency repair incidents in less than 8 hours.

Water main issues that require emergency repairs can be complex and require initial investigation to determine what is really happening underground, often in areas where there are multiple water mains running alongside other utilities such as communications, electric, natural gas, and sewer. Once the issue has been identified by an inspector, a repair crew must be dispatched, site conditions verified, valves operated to minimize impacts for damage while maintaining service and public health, site safety set up to protect our employees and the public, and utility locates called in prior to excavation. Then the water main is isolated for repairs, beginning the timer for this metric.

Challenges in isolating the main to allow for these repairs can be complicated when isolation valves are inoperable due to failure. Furthermore, restoration of the water main can sometimes result in additional water main leaks, breaks within the isolation due to the condition of the main, and the stresses associated with isolation and restoration.

To mitigate these issues and improve water service reliability, the Water Division is undertaking a Water Master Plan project and developing an aggressive plan to renew and replace water mains and valves in the distribution system. The plan is based on a data driven condition assessment using a water main break model, and the application of a risk and consequence scoring system.

Data Takeaways

• Currently, approximately 64% of water main breaks are repaired within 8 hours, which does not meet the Division’s goal of repairing 80% of water main breaks within 8 hours. 
• Q2 2026 performance represents an improvement from the previous quarter, but doesn’t meet the accomplishments of Q4 2025. 
• One reason for improved performance in Q2 is due to the warm water temperature and other impacts of seasonality (e.g., there are typically fewer water main breaks in the spring and it is easier to repair in mild weather). 
• At the same time, there are factors that may be preventing further improvement in this metric, such as a recent increase in proactive replacements of water infrastructure (such as non-operational valves and fire hydrants that need to be replaced). Due to the nature of these infrastructure replacements, outages may need to last more than 8 hours so the work can be completed.

Active outages and recent repairs can be viewed on the Water Outages page. If you are experiencing a water outage, you can report a water problem through the Citizens' Service Bureau.