HOUSTON – Houston Public Works announced that it has seen a significant reduce in the number of water line leaks throughout the city of Houston.
HPW addressed the leaks with approved overtime hours for field staff and hired additional contractors to fix the problems.
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As of Friday, the city has less than 100 pending repairs for water line leaks.
At the peak in January, there were approximately 1,050 active leaks. The higher number of leaks began with the drought in May 2022 and was exacerbated by the December 2022 winter freeze, according to HPW.
“I thank the public for its patience and commend Houston Public Works for reducing the number of water leaks. It’s been a collaborative effort between city employees and contractors,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said. “We have more hard work ahead to repair and rehabilitate more than 7,000 miles of water lines across Houston, and I’m confident Houston Water will reduce the number of water leaks even further.”
HPW will continue to work to reduce the number of active water leaks through multiple efforts such as the following:
- Working with contract vendors to update engineering, construction, and permitting standards so water lines are robust and stand up to other utilities as they work within the city’s right-of-way.
- Reviewing how information is collected and add parameters to the information collected in the field. This will provide the ability to filter the information and identify water leak trends.
- Ongoing capital improvement projects to rehabilitate and rebuild water lines across the city, which can be found at EngageHouston.org.
Customers can continue report water leaks to 311 or online at houstontx.gov/311.
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