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Great Lakes Water Authority says 14 Mile Road transmission main is failing; replacement could cost hundreds of millions
Summary
GLWA CEO Suzanne Coffee told the Farmington Hills City Council that a 48‑inch transmission main built in the 1970s has broken repeatedly (most recently March 7), that inspections have not identified a single systemic defect across the line, and that a full replacement across the affected miles could cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars; GLWA is evaluating monitoring and phased approaches.
The Farmington Hills City Council heard a detailed technical briefing on March 23 from Suzanne Coffee, chief executive officer of the Great Lakes Water Authority, about repeated failures on a 48‑inch transmission main that runs along 14 Mile Road.
Coffee said the pipe — built in the 1970s and operated at high pressure — broke again on March 7, the latest in a series of breaks dating to 2017. GLWA has inspected the line, renewed dozens of individual segments and applied electromagnetic inspection techniques; the segment that failed most recently had been inspected in 2021 and showed no detectable defects at that time.
"This pipe should not continue to break like this," Coffee…
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