FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - The City of Fort Lauderdale has issued a boil water advisory for residents living near Bayview Drive after a water main break Sunday night.
The city issued a boil water notice for residents living east of Bayview Drive from Northeast 26th Street south to Northeast 24th Place and the block just south of Northeast 26th Street and west of Bayview up to Northeast 27th Avenue.
According to the city, the water main break was caused by repairs being done to a fire hydrant, not the decaying pipes that residents have been dealing with since December.
Crews are performing emergency repairs on the 10-inch cast-iron pipe around Northeast 25th Court.
Just before nightfall, crews lowered a new pipe into the New River.
Not long after, a small water main break was discovered.
Video sent by a 7News viewer showed water spewing from an 8-inch water main and onto Cordova Road near Northeast Seventh Street on Monday night.
A precautionary boil water notice is now in effect for people who live on Southeast 11th Street east of Cordova and on Cordova between Southeast 11th Street and 11th Court.
Residents in the area say they are fed up with the pace at which the city is working on the issue.
The city plans on spending more than $600 million in the next five years to fix the aging pipes and infrastructure, which residents call old and decrepit. The city also plans on spending over $1 billion over the next 20 years.
“It has been worrying me. It’s close. It’s in our neighborhood, and it’s where I walk and where I walk my dogs and where I live,” said resident Wendy Frank, who lives a few blocks away from Cordova.
This is Fort Lauderdale’s third water main break since Saturday, when a 16-inch pipe ruptured 35 feet underwater in the south fork of the New River, near Southwest Seventh Street.
City manager Chris Lagerbloom said the city is doing everything possible to replace the aging infrastructure.
“We’re working as quickly as we can to get this infrastructure back to new,” Lagerbloom said, “and I’ll highlight the fact that we’ve done a lot of relining of the pipes in the last six months. We’ve broken ground as recent as yesterday on the main bypass pipe that we keep talking about, that redundant line. We’re working as lightning fast as we can to get the repairs made on these pipes.”
“It’s a city issue that they just have to deal with before they keep building and building,” Frank said. “It’s really sad and pitiful and awful.”
The repairs to the water main break are challenging because the pipe is 35 feet below the surface of the water.
Julian Siegel, the owner of the Riverside Market Cafe, said, “We’re burning through latex gloves, we’re burning through dishes left and right. The problem is there’s no bathroom. No employees, no guests can wash their hands or use the restroom.”
Siegel said losing water for part of the weekend cost him valuable business.
“We’re grateful it was a water main break and not another sewage break, obviously,” he said. “We’re just hoping the city will get their act together and get some precautionary measures in place.”
Siegel said the break has forced him to make new rules in his home.
“I don’t allow my children to use the New River,” he said. “There’s no more fishing, there’s no more casting. There’s no paddle boarding, no kayaking. They’re not going out in the small boat.”
Once the repairs are completed, the city will have to pass tests for two consecutive days before the boil water notice can be lifted.
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