Water mains are leaking around Los Angeles County as aging pipes fail
Back-to-back breaks in Universal City and Venice flooded streets and cut service to dozens of customers, spotlighting cast-iron pipe that in one case dates to 1934.
A water main break flooded Cahuenga Boulevard in Universal City on the afternoon of Monday, November 1, 2021, cutting service to 41 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers, according to NBC Los Angeles. The break stretched from Oakshire Drive to Lankershim Boulevard.
The failed pipe was 87 years old, installed in 1934, and LADWP attributed the failure to a "split" in the cast-iron line, NBC Los Angeles reported. The outlet noted the same main had already sprung three separate leaks over the preceding five years. Crews targeted a repair completion time of 2 p.m. Tuesday.
A second break followed in Venice around 2 a.m. Tuesday, November 2, between Broadway Street and Brooks Avenue, involving a 6-inch cast-iron main and cutting service to at least 12 customers, including a school administration building, according to NBC Los Angeles. Crews shut off the water there around 3 a.m., with repairs estimated to take six to eight hours and one traffic lane in each direction left open in the meantime.
Businesses feeling the disruption
General Admission restaurant manager Kamran Pourkazemi, near the Universal City break, told NBC Los Angeles the flooding compounded an already difficult stretch: "It's tough right now, cause of COVID and everything...there's just always something new."
CBS Los Angeles reported the Cahuenga Boulevard pipe ruptured just before 3:30 p.m. Monday, and quoted Sweet Lily Bakery owner Marime Lefiucheur on the emergency response: "It actually took some time for the firemen to come, it took maybe like 40 minutes for them to come out," she said, adding that fire personnel told her repairs would take hours. CBS Los Angeles also placed the Venice break specifically on the 900 block of Abbot Kinney Boulevard, reporting water flowed there for over an hour before crews arrived to shut it off.
How far the water traveled
ABC7 Los Angeles, covering the same Cahuenga Boulevard break, reported the water ran nearly a mile down the boulevard between Oakshire Drive and Vineland Avenue, flooding at least one parked car and shutting down a lane of traffic. The outlet reported LADWP crews had restored water service by Tuesday morning and were continuing sidewalk repair work into Tuesday afternoon, while brown, muddy runoff reached businesses along the corridor beyond the General Admission restaurant already cited in the original reporting.
The scale of the underlying problem
The two breaks were part of a wider pattern of failures across the region that week, and NBC Los Angeles' reporting ties them to a broader infrastructure age problem rather than an isolated incident. Neither NBC Los Angeles nor ABC7's coverage gives a countywide figure for how many miles of main are of comparable age, and neither specifies whether LADWP committed to an accelerated replacement schedule for lines with a documented history of repeat leaks, such as the Universal City main.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by NBC Los Angeles and ABC7 Los Angeles. It restores a story originally published on this site in November 2021; figures are as reported at the time.