Results from a Comprehensive 2022 Study of Water Main Performance in the USA and Canada

Utah State University (USU) has just completed the most comprehensive water main survey ever undertaken in the US and Canada for the purpose of understanding how utilities use pipe in their systems and determining the performance of different pipe materials. Of the 802 basic survey respondents, 791 participants provided water main distribution data having a total of 399,812 mi of pipe. This pipe mileage represents 17.1% out of an estimated 2.33 million miles of pipe that is installed in the US and Canada, making this the largest survey of its kind. A full USU report of these most recent survey results was published in December of 2023. Similar survey results were published by USU in 2012 and 2018. When the most common pipe materials (cast iron, ductile iron, PVC, and asbestos cement) were compared, PVC had the lowest overall failure rate and cast iron had the highest at 2.9 and 28.6 breaks (100 mi-year), respectively.