Northville water main break repairs underway, causing road closure

Northville residents deal with water main break downtown

Some residents are making do without running water while repairs are underway. 

NORTHVILLE, Mich. (FOX 2) - A water main break closed the intersection of Fairbrook Street and South Center in Northville on Thursday.

The backstory:

Residents have no running water while repair work continues. City officials say this is the result of aging infrastructure.

Officials say they see these water main breaks 15 to 20 times a year.

Some residents say they had no idea what was happening until they found themselves without water in their home.

"It was a surprise to us, we just moved here from out of state," said Alina Shanker. "We just arrived. We’re still getting settled and then surprise we did not have water.

"We just weren’t provided any information so it would’ve been nice. Had we had something, so we just weren’t running around using our time that way."

George Lahanas is the Northville city manager.

"The infrastructure is older this happens in a lot of Michigan cities where you have water pipes that are maybe older than 50 years old," he said. "Here there was a small break in the side of a pipe.

"They cut out the pipe to replace it, and put the water back on, so it’s a couple-hour repair."

FOX 2: What is the city doing to prevent this?"

"So overall you fix this when it happens, but then you make improvements to your water system over time so we have a lot of water main projects going on," he said.

The city manager says he is looking into what notification process was followed and why the resident wasn’t notified.

He says if a large number of residents are affected, a Nixel alert goes out, but fortunately, a large number of residents did not lose water this time.