WATERBURY — Since December, Waterbury has suffered multiple water main breaks, leaving residents and businesses without water for days. And officials know that isn’t the last of it. “Breaks are going to continue to occur in the system,” Mayor Paul Pernerewski Jr. said. “We haven’t done enough maintenance over the years. That’s a problem the city has had throughout its history.” Pernerewksi said the city’s water pipes — some installed in the 1940s, others in the 1970s and 1980s — are in varying condition. The same goes for valves that have failed. But he said it’s the lack of direct work done on those pipes over the last 70 years that is coming back to hurt residents now. “Prior administrations in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s — in order to keep taxes and costs down — didn’t do enough maintenance,” he said. “100 years of neglect. You can’t fix it in 10 years.”
After repeated water main breaks, Waterbury confronts ‘100 years of neglect’
