Bursting water mains on City College campus have caused flooding and facilities to close while repairs are made.

“About a month ago, we had one of our major water supply lines break on Cliff Drive,” Director of Facilities Julie Hendricks said. “Because of the way our water system is set up, we were able to isolate that water valve and shut it off.”

Hendricks went on to explain that while the valve was shut off, there was a large increase in pressure to the rest of the water system. She believes that the added stress to the already aging pipes may be the reason for the recent breaks.

“We don’t know this for sure, we can only guess [the increased pressure] is the issue,” Hendricks said. “So far we’ve had about four or five breaks since that first one.”

The problem may be part of an unexplained growing trend throughout southern California. City College is not the only place in the area to experience an increase in problems with water lines.

According to The New York Times, there have been 43 water main breaks in Los Angeles that have flooded or damaged streets since Sept. 1, compared with 13 in September of 2006. Theories of the cause abound, but so far even experts are puzzled.

The The Los Angeles Department of Water and Powerr released a statement saying that they would not speculate about the causes of the recent breaks until a full investigation had been made.

When Los Angeles has a water main break, the city responds with trained teams of municipal workers and firefighters. At City College, the problem has to be handled by its own maintenance workers.

“Basically, there’s a defined point at which the city water that is supplied [ends, and] they kind of say ‘hey, look, that’s yours and this is ours,'” Hendricks said. “So, all these breaks that have been happening on campus are our responsibility to address and respond to.”

Hendricks explained that when a water main breaks, the people in the building let the facilities office know that something is leaking or flooding. “Hopefully we can shut off an area really fast and get it repaired, but a lot of times it’s a pretty big inconvenience for building occupants,” she said.

Water main breaks happen on a pretty regular basis, Hendricks said. “When you know you have old water lines, you do your best to replace them when you’re doing building projects,” she said. “Generally the practice isn’t just to dig up your whole water system and replace it all at once.”

Hendricks went on to say, “There is a proposed project within the bond program for us to replace quite a bit of our water lines over on the East Campus. But, the scope of that project has not been defined yet. That would be a good opportunity to hopefully take care of a lot of these problems.”