Last week Hoboken experienced one of the worst infrastructure-related disasters in recent history. As most are aware, a contractor doing gas line work for PSE&G accidentally ruptured the water main that imports a majority of Hoboken’s water from Jersey City, disrupting water service and cutting off water access for most residents of the city. This specific issue may be unique to Hoboken, but it highlights the issues with private industry and outdated infrastructure which plague cities all across America.
The biggest question on residents’ minds is the cause of the incident, how did this contractor break the water main in the first place? Although the cause is still mostly unknown, the best theory is that while doing nearby repairs on a gas line, the vibration from the construction was enough to rupture the weakened water main. PSE&G claims that the blueprints in the area may have been incorrect, but the city is planning an investigation into the matter and has requested that they maintain any documents related to the disruption. In a statement from Mayor Bhalla, he said “We intend to hold PSE&G fully accountable for their actions … [and] that the city intends to collect damages incurred as a result of their apparent negligence”
While PSE&G may be responsible for the accident, a separate contractor may be liable for their negligence in their response to the water outage. Even though the city owns the infrastructure, Hoboken contracts Veolia NJ (Formerly SUEZ) as the private operator who maintains and repairs Hoboken’s water system. During the course of repairs on the water main, Veolia was responsible for monitoring the water pressure of the system, ensuring the city and residents that if it dropped below a certain threshold a boil advisory would be instated. Although Veolia had provided assurances the water was safe to drink, they were not actively monitoring the pressure data for the system. Since the city is legally obligated to listen to Veolia’s advice before issuing an advisory, one was not issued until several days after the initial incident, at the fault and negligence of Veolia. In the same statement, the mayor stated that similar actions are being taken towards Veolia as with PSE&G in terms of accountability.
Although this is just another in a long list of recent issues with Hoboken’s water system, every outage leaves residents wondering why the system is so fragile and if anything is being done to improve it. The main cause of the constant ruptures is to do with the age of the system and the materials it was built with. Some of the piping in the city is almost 100 years old and built mostly out of cast iron. Because the material is so old, it has begun to degrade and become incredibly brittle, allowing vibrations from nearby construction to easily crack a pipe. However, in recent years Hoboken has made significant strides toward improving the water system, replacing a significant amount of old piping all around the city. Though progress is steady, there is still a large amount of construction to be completed, only five percent has been upgraded in the past two decades, but it is expected to reach 18% by 2034. This lack of progress is mainly due to funding, as the city is not able to afford the expensive price tag of a complete system rework.
These Hoboken-specific issues help to emphasize the larger problem with American infrastructure. Hoboken is not the only city with significant water problems, almost every other major city relies on similarly outdated systems to provide clean water to residents. On average, a water main ruptures every two minutes somewhere in the country, and billions of gallons of clean water are lost daily to leaky pipes. While our systems decay, federal funding for water utilities has plummeted in recent years, leaving municipalities unable to afford the skyrocketing price of repairs. This comes as climate change is accelerating the issue, causing more pipes to freeze or rupture while also increasing the stress and demand on these systems.
And water isn’t the only piece of infrastructure affected or under threat. The same issues that plague this system: age, materials, and a lack of funding, are threatening every other piece of American infrastructure, from bridges and roads to energy and rails. We have witnessed all of these issues explode in the past few years, from climate-related power outages in Texas to a completely unregulated rail industry in Ohio, power companies increasing prices during emergencies, and bridges collapsing at an increasing rate. Without powerful regulations to keep businesses accountable, and without the proper funding to ensure our systems are properly maintained, our bridges will continue to collapse and greedy parasites will continue to leech off of our crumbling society.
