Delay Can Mean Danger

Even as they juggle fiscal priorities, elected officials are bombarded by stacks of reports. What happened in Orange County this week stands as a warning that while documents gather dust, problems within the aging infrastructure only get worse, risking a perilous day of reckoning. Municipal leaders need to know which reports can be filed away and which demand action.

Westminster City Council members were alerted in 1992 that the city’s two 5-million-gallon water tanks had developed cracks and were leaking. And in 1997 city officials were warned by an industrial inspector that an earthquake might have damaged parts of one of the tanks. No repairs resulted in either instance. On Monday, the reservoir that was the subject of the 1997 warning burst shortly before dawn, spewing water in horrific force and injuring six people.

Westminster’s concrete, above-ground water tanks were built in 1968. Investigators are trying to learn what caused the rupture. One thing is sure: The aging of roads, bridges or tanks cannot be ignored; maintenance is required, and eventual replacement is the only answer.

A former Westminster city manager said the 1992 engineering report spelled out the need for $20 million worth of earthquake retrofits and repairs to the city’s tanks and wells. That’s a lot of money for a financially struggling city. Westminster had to spend $10 million to improve its water system, but none of the money went to retrofitting the tanks.

Westminster was given the chance to sell the system to a private company or to raise water rates to make repairs. It did neither. City officials said after the accident that weekly inspections of the tanks disclosed no problems.

The toll in damage and personal injury could have been much worse. It was a sobering reminder that maintenance can be deferred only so long even in Southern California, a place that in many ways always seems new.