A number of water main breaks were reported in the first three months of 2014 in Junction City.

At least five of the breaks were a long East 9th Street, the last one being reported on February 27th.

Greg McCaffery, Municipal Services Director, explained the age of the water main along that street is nearing the end of it’s useful life.

“It’s probably in the range of 40 plus years in age. So it’s at the point were its beyond its useful life and we’re starting to see the deterioration of the pipe itself,” McCaffery said.

McCaffery does have a recommendation ready to go in front of the City Commission Tuesday. The recommendation is to re-engineer three blocks of that water main along 9th Street, from Washington Street to Price Street.

“We’ll abandon it in place and put in a new eight inch water main,” McCaffery explained.

Since the water main is under the street the cost of re-engineering the pipe will be costly.

“We don’t have a lot of right away area or places to put the water main, and so we’re going to have to put it back into the street and that generally increases the cost because you have to replace the street.”

McCaffery explained that replacing the street would cost about $140,000. The engineering design and construction inspection portion would cost another estimated $40,000.

In the recommendation the new pipe that would replace the current pipe would be made out of plastic and have a life span of between 70 and 80 years.