Crews hadn’t even finished repairing her driveway after a water main break two weeks ago, when the same main broke again Thursday.
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“It sounds like a boom,” DeYoung said. “The guy comes to my door and he says ‘I’m sorry. It blew again.’”Every year, there are hundreds of water main breaks on both sides of the state line.
“Water comes out of the ground,” Jerry Koukol, a spokesperson for WaterOne in Johnson County, said. “It creates a bit of a mess.”
Summer is the peak season when homes and businesses can lose water for hours when they need it most.
“The ground is like a big sponge,” Koukol said. “When it gets wet, it expands. When it gets hot, it contracts.”
“No news is good news in our business,” Aaron Balliet, a utility repair manager for KC Water, said.
The national average is about 15 breaks for 100 miles of pipe for water utilites with more than 1,000 miles of pipe. A wide-ranging study from Utah State said outside of construction issues, the number is around 14 breaks per 100 miles of pipe, although smaller utility companies can have much higher rates.
(Read more: KMBC.com)