Freezing temperatures cause water pipe ruptures in Chisinau

Taps in thirty apartment houses and two hospitals in Chisinau went dry on Tuesday after temperatures plummeted overnight, causing a number of water pipes to fail. Massive leaks occurred on the streets Decebal, Bucuresti, Mircesti, Doina and Gh. Madan, the water utility Apa-Canal Chisinau (ACC) said in a press release, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. 16 crews were deployed to the scenes to repair the ruptures and the utility hopes water supplies will be resumed at full capacity by the end of the day. The freezing temperatures over the recent days are responsible for about 120 pipe ruptures each day, an unusually high number, the ACC says. Most affected are the gray iron pipes, which are highly vulnerable to temperature tribulations. ACC operates some 600 kilometers of such pipes and since their repair is complicated and time-consuming, water supply disruptions tend to be enduring. The utility also says that it cannot provide water in tanks, the standard solution when water supply is disrupted, because at temperatures below 5 degrees the distribution of water is simply not possible. The best solution, according to the ACC, is to replace gray iron pipes, for example, with pipes made of ductile iron, whose endurance features are better. Water pipes are 70 percent worn out, some of the pipes are nearly 70 years old, says the utility, but there has been scarce funding for pipe replacement in recent years, because of the “ill-conceived pricing policy”.