What's the deal with all the collapsing water pipes in LA? Engineers: "We don't know."

Engineers in Los Angeles are baffled by the recent epidemic of failing underground water pipes throughout Los Angeles. Every time you turn on the local TV news around here, over the last few months — there's new footage of a "major blowout." After examining "dozens of ruptures, some of which flooded streets, damaged vehicles and buildings and created a sinkhole so big that it almost swallowed a firetruck," officials and city engineers have agreed that something odd is going on, but they don't know exactly what, or why so many points of failure in such a compact window of time. Snip from Los Angeles Times:

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Los Angeles' water system was put in place by William Mulholland, who figured out how to tap water from the Eastern Sierra and the Owens Valley and designed an aqueduct system that let it flow to Los Angeles on the force of gravity alone.

The influx allowed semi-arid Los Angeles to boom — and subdivisions marched outward in the 1920s and the years just after World War II.

The system remains a marvel to many engineers and still sends water over the Santa Monica Mountains from Sylmar to San Pedro using gravity. But parts of it are now almost 100 years old, and many of the pipes are wearing out.

One note on which most agree: a bankrupt state and a city crippled by slashed budgets are ill-equipped to solve the problem.

Here's one LA Times story, and here's another from this morning after two more pipes burst.

(Image: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)