the water authority has been slammed with calls from hundreds of customers-- with broken pipes or no water at all. kayla anderson went out with one of the crews today for a look at how they're handling all the problems. kayla? so far today crews have respond to about 600 calls. and tonight they still have a backlog of about 500. surprisingly- there's one common problem popping up at the majority of those calls. crews say broken water meters are to blame for about 70-percent of the problems across the city. clearing the leaks-- bucket after bucket-- and replacing the meters is a simple and quick job. but it's a big one-- that's got repair crews scrambling. some of the meters are from the 80's-- and many are older than that. they're not faulty though-- there's actually a small piece on the meter designed to break-- when there's frozen pipes or cold temperatures. "it's designed to blow out so the meter can be restored, so the meter won't crack itself." the water utility is also seeing frozen lines and leaks inside homes and businesses ... and shutting off water service when residents need time to make repairs. "customers are very understanding. they know how cold it is out here." the water authority has doubled the number of people working and responding to calls. "my crews work monday through thursday. but they're out today and we're usually working till about nine, ten o'clock at night. and we had some guys later last night." with crews heading from call to call... it's one case closed-- and onto the next problem. there are additional operators standing by for customer phone calls overnight. emergency shutoff requests get first priority. the number to call is 842-9287.
