New Water Main Pipe Laid In Oakland County, Pic Shows Old One Nearly Shattered

(WWJ) Repairs should begin this morning on the broken water main in west Oakland County that is affecting more than 300,000 people.

WWJ's Charlie Langton was there when a new section of water main arrived at the site of Monday night's break in Farmington Hills. Workers stayed busy overnight getting the area ready for new pipe.

Once a new section of concrete pipe is in place at the water main break on 14 Mile Road, Sheryl Porter of the Great Lakes Water Authority says the return of water service will be on schedule for late Friday.

"A water quality testing -- that takes 48 hours, that's a standard process and there are no shortcuts for that -- so if everything goes well it looks like we're still on schedule," said Sheryl Porter of the Great Lakes Water Authority.

She added they're taking steps to find trouble spots in the system and prevent issues like this in the future.

"We're in the process of getting a contractor in place that can use new technology to give us information about where we may be vulnerable in infrastructure that is already in the ground," Porter said.

One local expert says there's more trouble ahead -- like Monday night's water main break -- unless Lansing starts spending more on Michigan's aging infrastructure.

Lawrence Technological University Dean of Engineering Nabil Grace says the state is trying to do more to fix the roads. But are they doing enough?

"When you drive on the Feeney highway bridge, when you look up, you can see a lot of plywood because  simply we cannot fix the bridge, so we're trying to catch concrete coming down on the highway," he said. "Same thing for the pipes, these need to be replaced, these need to be addressed, but there's a cost for this."

Grace says repairing Michigan's infrastructure would be a huge job, given the years of neglect. Gov. Rick Snyder most recently highlighted it as an issue in his state of the state address where he said it will cost the state at least a billion dollars a year to replace and fix roads, water and sewer systems.

"It's not going to be the first time, it's not going to be the last time unless we look at this problem and the budget will allow for deteriorated infrastructure," Grace said.