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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 said, adding that the failures are occurring more rapidly than engineers expected. She told council members that a small subset of pipes manufactured in the 1970s have documented manufacturing anomalies and that those anomalies may explain the unusually rapid degradation in some locations. GLWA has engaged national consultants to study the failure mode and inspect pipeline sections.
Councillors pressed for technical detail and options. Councilman Bridges asked whether the March break was near the earlier 2017 break; Coffee confirmed the breaks were within tens of yards of each other and said GLWA has prioritized this corridor for inspection, looped parts of the system to add redundancy and repaired segments when defects were found.
On costs, Coffee said a full replacement spanning multiple miles — from Haggerty to Inkster as discussed in council questions — would be far larger than typical capital projects. "Replacing that much pipe is not tens of millions of dollars, it's more like in the hundreds of millions of dollars," she said, and GLWA engineers are preparing estimates to determine feasible options and funding approaches.
Council members also asked about monitoring strategies beyond periodic inspection. Coffee described acoustic fiber‑optic cable systems that can be installed inside a line to detect wire breaks and provide more continuous monitoring; GLWA is piloting that technology on newer replacement pipe sections west of M‑5 and will evaluate whether it can be used more broadly.
Coffee said crews completed repairs at the most recent break, that temporary roadwork and subgrade restoration were underway, and that GLWA is targeting early April for reopening the road if weather permits. She emphasized that the pipe is GLWA’s responsibility and that the authority is pursuing a "holistic approach" to the corridor to reduce future breaks.
The council did not take any formal action on the report. The briefing concluded with GLWA offering to return with more technical findings and cost estimates as consultants complete their analysis.
