Holladay residents frustrated with repeated water main breaks, outages

HOLLADAY, Utah (KUTV) — Frustrations have mounted in a Holladay neighborhood struggling with ongoing water issues.

Resident Daren Taylor said frequent water main breaks continue to leave about half of the homes in her neighborhood without water and power, sometimes for days at a time with no notice.

On Sunday, she woke up to see her neighbor’s driveway completely flooded and immediately knew to start filling up her own bathtub with water.

“By the time my tub was full, the water was off,” she explained.

It’s the second time in less than a week that Taylor experienced an all-day water outage at her home.

“It also happened last month,” she explained. “Last year during Easter we were out of water for about 36 hours.”

Taylor works from home and said the frequent water and power outages make things difficult, including not having internet for work or water for daily needs like cooking, cleaning, and drinking.

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“The pipes are old,” Taylor explained. “They need to be changed out completely instead of just putting bandaids on them because it disrupts the whole neighborhood.”

A Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities spokesperson said on Sunday alone, there were four water line breaks in the neighborhood, after another one burst on Wednesday.

The Department of Public Utilities said the Ductile Iron pipe was installed in the 80’s, adding — “It has a high priority for replacement and is on the list. We don’t have a time schedule yet as the project needs to be engineered and verified it will fit out in the field.”

For now, residents like Taylor are growing desperate for some type of permanent fix to the ongoing problem.

“I know that would be a large undertaking and probably affect us as well with no water and power,” said Taylor. “But then after that, after it’s repaired, we wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.”

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