Fort Worth plans to spend $227 million over the next five years to fix and replace old water pipes, but that’s less than a quarter of what it estimated is needed to fix its aging infrastructure.

Water department head Chris Harder told the Star-Telegram in March 2021 it would cost about $1 billion to fix all of the city’s 3,874 miles of water pipelines, however, a department spokesperson wrote in an email that figure is closer to $1.5 billion with inflation.

The city expects about 14.2 water main breaks or leaks per 100 miles of pipe per year. That comes out to roughly 550 breaks and leaks per year, but according to city budget figures, it has consistently outpaced that number since at least 2016.

Cast iron pipes make up less than a fifth of Fort Worth’s water mains, but accounted for roughly 80% of the water main breaks in 2020 and 2021, water department spokesperson Mary Gugliuzza wrote in an email to the Star-Telegram.

The city has approximately 697 miles cast iron piping most of which is concentrated parts of the city built before around 1970, she wrote.

The city council added $11.7 million to the water department’s budget in 2022 to expedite cast iron pipe replacement. This brings the department’s maintenance and replacement budget to around $77 million, which is close to what water Harder said his department would need, speaking to the Star-Telegram in March 2021.

The city considers a pipe’s age, condition and potential damage it might cause in a failure to determine which ones get fixed first, Gugliuzza wrote.

Most of the city’s planned pipe repairs are slated for parts of the city inside Loop 820. These areas were the hardest hit during the 2021 winter storm with 312,000 residents in north and west Fort Worth forced to boil water for days.

The water department is coordinating with the department of Transportation and Public Works to replace water and sewer pipes as part of the city’s street rehabilitation efforts. TPW got an additional $81 million for street repair from the recently passed 2022 bond.

This story was originally published July 13, 2022 5:00 AM.