City of Warren drafting 50 year plan to replace old main water lines
WARREN, Ohio - As a much needed water line replacement continues in Warren, the city is drafting a plan to replace all its old lines.
Construction on a one mile stretch of Mahoning Avenue is replacing a line that’s more than 100 years old. The city had 25 water breaks in that section of the line from Summit to Mayflower Street in 2023. That project costs $1,929,684 total. The city secured $423,159 of that money from a Ohio Public Works grant.
The line will be strategically put in the “devils strip” of the road, which is the area between public and private property. After it is replaced, the city’s road department will freshly pave that section of Mahoning Avenue.
“If there happens to be any types of, main breaks on that line we won’t be putting service cuts into the newly surfaced roads,” Warren’s Director of Public Safety and Service, Eddie Colbert said about the benefit of putting the new line in the devil’s strip.
Once that project is completed, the city will turn its attention to the 300 more miles of old water lines that need to be replaced. Most of those lines were installed in the 1960’s according to Colbert.
In 2023, the city had a total of 147 water main breaks - most of which could be traced back to the old lines. To try and cut those numbers down, the city is drafting a 50 year plan to get rid of all of it’s old lines.
“It's almost going to be like a golden gate bridge when you're done you'll be starting over again it would be a continuous project,” Colbert said.
There is no official number on how much replacing everything would cost but the city is expecting it to be in the hundred of millions or more - which they're hoping will come from federal and state funds.
Along with replacing the main lines, the city is making separate plans to get rid of all of the lead services lines. That project is expected to be funded by a $1 million loan from the EPA.
“We don't have a ton of lead lines,” Franco Lucarelli, the City of Warrens Director of Utilities said. “We have 20 thousand accounts and out of those 20 thousand accounts we have less than 10 percent that would have lead services or may have lead services.”
The water department will be mailing a survey to every Warren resident in the next few weeks to try and finalize the number of lead lines that they will need to replace. That number must be reported to the EPA by October 2024.
The 50 year plan for the main line replacement project is expected to be finished by fall of 2024.
