Who’s to blame for Mesa water main break in dispute
Somebody has to pay for the mess on Mesa Street caused by a water main break earlier this week.
As the cleanup and massive fix continues, El Paso Water Utilities and the contractor that hit the huge pipe disagree on who’s to blame.
The repairs are not only going to take some time, but they’re going to be expensive.And while the water utility is blaming Advanced Boring Specialists out of Washington, the company that was installing a gas line when the break happened, that company says EPWU is at fault.
“They knew where it was in a horizontal direction, but they didn’t know how deep it was,” said Alan Shubert, Vice President of Operations for El Paso Water Utilities.
He says Advanced Boring Specialists is to blame for this mess on Mesa and has to pay for the fix, which could be as much as six figures.
“We are of course keeping track of the cost so we intend to have them pay for it,” Shubert said.
Shubert said EPWU comes out does something called spotting, painting the pavement to show where these water lines are at. However, he said this company failed to do something called pot-holing, digging down to see how deep those water lines are. Instead, he said they struck a 24 inch water line.
“They couldn’t have known (where it was) without pot-holing it,” Shubert said. “And so they just drilled, they bored right into the side of our 24 inch line, and made a mess.”
However, ABC-7 spoke with the CEO of ABS and he said his company did pot-hole it and is not to blame, putting the blame for the water main break back on El Paso Water Utilities.
“That’s their position,” ABS CEO Jim Downing said. “Our guys in the field said the locators (for the water main) were four and a half feet off. They were in excess of what the law allows … There will probably be some dispute as to who is liable, which will happen at a later time.”
Meanwhile, El Paso drivers deal with the mess.
Shubert said instead of weeks to fix, as earlier estimated, it should only take days. He said TxDOT is allowing them to use an accelerator in the pavement so it doesn’t take as long to set.
Construction workers on Mesa told ABC-7 they could finish before the weekend.