This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

SACRAMENTO-

Sacramento City Public Utilities engineers say they got rid of the antiquated pipes, like the one that burst in Los Angeles over the weekend, after a catastrophic break in the city in the 1990’s.

The Los Angeles water main that spilled millions of gallons of water on to Sunset Boulevard and the UCLA campus was made of riveted steel.

“The pipe was inferior and we had to think about taking that pipe out of the ground,” Rick Matsuo, the supervising engineer for the city’s Public Utilities Department, said Wednesday.

Twelve miles of riveted pipe was removed over the years since the break.

sacramento water main
A City of Sacramento worker makes repairs to a water main.

The city is constantly upgrading its water delivery system because it has pipes that date to the 1900’s. Sometimes, newer materials are not as rugged as advertised. Crews were repairing a leaking ceramic composite pipe in South Sacramento today that leads from the water main to a fire hydrant. The material was state of the art in the 1950’s and 60’s but is now considered too brittle and is no longer used.

“It’s almost impossible to predict when something’s going to happen, but we’ve done our best to analyze the pipes we have and see which ones that have been failing the most and start replacing the worst ones first,” Chris Powell, the construction manager for the Public Utilities Department, told FOX40.

Risk analysis studies have been made on all of the city’s water pipes and they are ranked in order of priorities for replacement. The city uses a 100 year replacement cycle. The money comes from bond sales and a portion of customer utility bills.