News

By Rich Pollack

When Delray Beach needed water, lots of it and in a hurry, it turned to those it knew it could count on — its neighbors.

Those neighbors came through, providing the city with more than 30 million gallons of drinking water in all — and preventing city utility customers from experiencing any difference in the flow of water coming from their faucets.  

The need for that emergency water arose when contractors working on a facet of Delray Beach’s new water treatment plant inadvertently drilled into a 36-inch pipe that brings fresh water in for treatment. That triggered a reaction that invoked agreements with neighboring communities, the scope of which is rarely needed.

The break also set off a response from city workers that saved water customers from having to deal with low pressure and a boil water notice. 

Key to preventing the situation from being worse than it turned out to be was a series of water main interconnects with neighboring communities that are always available but not often used. 

Those interconnects come in handy when more water than needed is produced during maintenance and during smaller line breaks. It is not common for utilities to need backup for system-wide disruptions from multiple neighbors like Delray Beach did on Jan. 3, when it called on Boca Raton, Boynton Beach and Palm Beach County for help. 

“It doesn’t happen often but it happens,” said Delray Beach Utilities Director Hassan Hadjimiry, who added that the last time water from other communities was needed for a system-wide problem was five years ago. 

Interconnects, he said, are standard operating procedure for utilities as an insurance against major production problems.

“This is part of normal operations that you have in your back pocket,” he said. “When something happens with water supply, we have to use it. The last thing we want is for the city not to have water.” 

At no point was the city without water, nor did it face even a threat of that. Residents were asked to reduce unnecessary usage for irrigation, car washing and driveway cleaning during the emergency.

Because the main line that was damaged was just one of three that brings water into the city’s aging water treatment plant, the chance that the utility would fail to provide water to customers without the interconnects was not an issue. 

Without that water coming in, however, Delray Beach might not have had enough water pressure to fully reach all its customers, especially those at the far reaches of the system.

The interconnects — large pipes that transport already treated water — are located at city boundaries, thus ensuring all customers have adequate water pressure. 

While repairs were being done — which took about a week for the most part, although additional work was still needed going into February — about 20 million gallons of water came from Palm Beach County, 10.5 million gallons came from Boca Raton and about 1.5 million gallons came from Boynton Beach. 

An additional small amount of water from a county interconnect at Linton Boulevard near Jog Road was still being used as of the middle of February. 

Different municipalities charge different rates, with Boca Raton charging $3.17 per thousand gallons, Boynton Beach $2.19 per thousand gallons and Palm Beach County $1.61 per thousand gallons. 

The cost of the water from the municipalities as well as the cost of repairs are being passed along to the contractor whose crews caused the break, Youngquist Brothers, Hadjimiry said. 

Implementing the interconnects, which required representatives from other municipalities to be on site to open valves simultaneously, was complicated slightly because the break occurred on a Saturday morning. 

Hadjimiry said that he was notified at 7:30 a.m., and was on site within a half hour and there for a large part of the weekend. 

All of the interconnects were in place by the end of the day, he said, before there was any impactful drop in water pressure in the system.

The break came as Delray Beach is in the process of building the new plant, which is expected to cost about $287 million and open in mid-2028.