Published May 24, 2026, 6:45 a.m. by Oakland County Mlive reporter Peg McNichol
While many people enjoy the three-day Memorial Day holiday weekend, hundreds of water professionals are working around the clock to ensure water remains flowing to faucets and toilets -- and to respond if another water main breaks.
A handful of significant breaks have happened in Oakland County, including on March 7, when a 48-inch water main break on 14 Mile Road between Drake and Farmington roads led to boil-water orders for residents in Farmington Hills, Walled Lake and parts of Novi. That incident caused extensive flooding along 14 Mile Road. A 42-inch water main broke on Sept. 25 on another section of 14 Mile Road, west of M-5.
Orion Township continues recovering from the economic fallout after a 42-inch water main broke on May 10, Mother's Day, cutting off water services to all of the township and the Village of Lake Orion, as well as parts of Auburn Hills, Oakland Township and Rochester Hills.
Mother's Day is typically the busiest restaurant day of the year. The township's restaurants were closed for several days. Township Supervisor Chris Barnett said during Monday's board of trustees meeting that plans are underway for a second-chance Mother's Day event to help restaurants and their employees recoup losses from the water crisis.
The quick and calm response to the May 10 water main break shortened the crisis from an anticipated two weeks to about four days without water, followed by four days under boil-water orders.
The efficient reaction can be traced in part to the 2016 formation of the North Oakland County Water Authority (NOCWA), which includes Auburn Hills, Orion Township, Pontiac and Rochester Hills. Members meet monthly to review basic operations, contracts and plan for emergencies.
The WRC took over Pontiac's water system during the emergency manager years. The other three NOCWA members own their own water systems. All four systems are interconnected and supplied by the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA).
Zach Earp, a WRC civil engineer and NOCWA board alternate, said the May 6 discovery of the leaky water main in Auburn Hills was lucky, because it gave all the communities a chance to mobilize and make plans.
That included bringing in a contractor, equipment and a section of pipe to replace the part that was failing. With a little more luck and time, they could have proactively repaired the failing pipe, but the water main burst just after 2 a.m. on Mother's Day. Still, Earp said the water professionals were available to respond to whatever happened.
"We already had a text group going when the leak started," he said. He jumped on to an early morning conference call with NOCWA members and WRC water maintenance supervisors Tim Artes and David Vicini, who were alerting the 20 people on their team.
GLWA issued press releases beginning with an alert about the leak and updates throughout the crisis. Those messages were shared by individual municipalities updating their communities. Residents helped in and beyond the affected areas by reducing their water use and helping their neighbors, Earp said.
The WRC helped by closing off a secondary GLWA water main that serves both Pontiac and Orion Township. The WRC and GLWA have underground vaults with valves that control the water's direction.
Though Orion Township residents had restricted their water use, the township's water tower was getting close to empty. If the water stopped completely, the system would experience more damage.
The WRC team worked with GLWA to send some water from two 5-million-gallon tanks in Pontiac to the secondary feed at the city's north border. That resupplied Orion Township's water tower just enough to prevent a bigger disaster.
It's not the first time the WRC has coordinated a workaround, Earp said, adding that emergency planning is part of the job.
Jim Nash, the county's water resources commissioner, said beyond coordinating emergency responses, NOCWA's work has saved the four communities just over $4 million a year by lowering prices with bulk purchasing and coordinating water flow from GLWA.
Nash said catastrophic water main breaks typically cannot be predicted but the slow leak before the May 10 incident allowed water professionals to get ready.
Many of the underground water mains, which vary in size, were made from wire-wrapped, prestressed concrete in the early 1970s, Nash said. But most of the water main breaks in North America have been traced to a single company, Interpace Corporation.
Interpace was one of several companies that produced prestressed concrete cylinder pipes in the 1970s and 1980s used for water mains. The pipes had an estimated 100-year lifespan. Interpace stopped making those pipes in the 1980s.
By 2003, about 500 water main breaks were traced to Interpace pipes, according to an American Society of Civil Engineers case study and a 2025 analysis by the Canada-based Pipeline Inspection and Condition Analysis Corporation.
Interpace used a type of steel wire that became brittle during production. In some instances, the wires cracked or broke, while in other cases the steel wire corroded, leading to water main leaks or breaks.
Nash said that while not all water mains in the county can be traced to one company, the chance of future water main breaks increases as the pipes age.
A recent Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) report suggested it would take more than $3 billion annually to support water infrastructure resilience, which includes 100 drinking water treatment facilities, 59 wastewater treatment facilities, 25 combined sewer overflow facilities and 13,000 road-stream crossings in the region.
Nash said that kind of spending can seem hard to justify when most systems are working relatively well, but without a proactive replacement program, people can expect to see future water main breaks.
The WRC is making improvements where possible, which includes a $19 million water main and sewer replacement project. The WRC secured $13 million in grants from the state for the project. The remaining costs will be paid through water rates.
Current NOCWA board members include:
Chairman, Bill Basigkow, Orion Township's public services director
Tracey Balint, Rochester Hills' public utilities engineer
Jason Deman, Auburn Hills' public utilities manager
Carrie Ricker Cox, WRC's special projects manager over regional systems for the county and Pontiac
Vince Sinacola, Orion Township's water and sewer superintendent (alternate, like Earp)
NOCWA's next meeting is 9 a.m. Thursday, June 4 at the county's public works building, One Public Works Drive, Waterford Township. The agenda will be published online at https://www.oakgov.com/government/water-resources-commissioner/resources/public-meetings/nocwa-meetings.
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