AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – The broken water main is fixed. But the bigger story is just getting started.
Local 4 is digging into what caused a 42-inch water main in Auburn Hills to fail decades ahead of schedule and what that could mean for communities across the region.
The Great Lakes Water Authority confirmed Tuesday that the damaged pipe has been replaced, marking a major milestone in a crisis that triggered a state of emergency across multiple communities in northern Oakland County.
But with roughly 80 miles of the same type of pipe still running underground across the region, the question on everyone’s mind isn’t just when the water comes back on. It’s whether this could happen again.
The pipe that wasn’t supposed to fail
The broken pipe was a pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe, or PCCP. It’s a highly engineered, multi-layered pipe installed in 1975 that was specifically designed to last 100 years. It failed at roughly the halfway mark.
GLWA CEO Sue Coffey said the pipe was considered the gold standard when it was put in the ground.
“It’s a multi-layered pipe and at that time was the best engineering choice—no doubt about it,” Coffey said. “But this pipe is degrading. We’ve seen it in other places faster than what it should.”
Located roughly 25 feet underground in Auburn Hills’ River Woods Park, the pipe first showed signs of trouble on May 6, 2026, when crews identified a leak and began working to reroute water.
But the situation escalated quickly. The line ruptured at approximately 1:30 a.m. on May 10, triggering a state of emergency and cutting water service to thousands of residents and businesses.
What went wrong
The investigators at Local 4 took the question of why directly to Coffey.
“There are experts in this type of pipe. This is a highly engineered pipe. It shouldn’t be breaking like this. We’ve seen it here. We’ve seen it elsewhere. We need to understand what is exactly happening,” she said.
Officials believe the pipe may have had a manufacturing defect — an anomaly that caused its internal pre-stressing wires, which give the pipe its structural strength, to deteriorate far faster than expected.
Because the pipe carried a projected 100-year lifespan, it wasn’t even scheduled for its next detailed inspection until 2030.
The old pipe has since been pulled from the ground and is being shipped to a lab for analysis.
A $1.6 billion problem hiding underground
Local 4 has learned that GLWA oversees 800 miles of transmission mains -- and 10 percent of it, roughly 80 miles, is made of the same pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe material.
Replacing it all would carry a price tag of approximately $1.6 billion, at an estimated $20 million per mile.
Coffey was direct about the financial reality facing the authority.
“It’s $1.6 billion we don’t have, and we’re also a governmental agency. We’re a public body corporate, we don’t have profit,” she said. “We are going to have to invest in our water infrastructure.”
Could this happen somewhere else?
When asked directly whether a similar failure could strike another community, Coffey said, “It could happen.”
GLWA says it is now moving to step up inspections and develop better monitoring tools for pipes of this type.
“What do we need to do? We need to step up inspections on these pipes. We need to figure out monitoring for these pipes,” Coffey said.
Where things stand now
As the investigation unfolds, work to restore full water service to affected communities continues.
The damaged pipe segment has been replaced with a new high-pressure steel pipe, which officials describe as the best available option.
Officials say pressure could be restored as early as Thursday. Full restoration is not expected until Sunday or Monday at the earliest.
---> Oakland County water main break: A rough timeline on repairs