Water Woes Persist With Water Main Break On Alton Road

MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) - It's a day of clean-up and pipe replacement after a night of sloshing through flood waters from a water main break on 10th and Alton Road Wednesday.

This situation is nothing new for people who live around here, "It happens a lot and it's really frustrating," said South Beach Resident Elkrim Nebrek.

Nebrek lives nearby.  This is the fourth time since April that a water pipe has broken on this one and a half mile stretch of construction on Alton Road just north of the McArthur Causeway.   It means another few days of boiling their water before drinking it.

"Are you able to drink water out of your faucet?" CBS4's Ted Scouten asked.   "I don't drink from that," said Nebrek.  "Since I see these things, I can't drink from...I just buy water at Whole Foods."

The Florida Department of Transportation said the pipe keeps breaking because it's old.  But that shouldn't happen for long--it's all being replaced--much of it is already done.  "The further south we continue on Alton," said Heather Leslie from the Florida Department of Transportation,  "the more pipe will be complete the less likely this happens."

Crews have five more blocks to go until it's all new.  But there are other problems.

"It's flooding all the time and we got flooded all the time," complains Charlotte Anderson, who lives in the area.

This area floods with a good rain or during extreme high tides like we see at this time of year.  But FDOT promises the Alton Road project should take care of that too.  "It's to install the underground pump stations, it's to install that new infrastructure underground that's going to help mitigate all the street flooding when it rains as well as tidal conditions," said Leslie.

To get to all the good benefits of this project, it's going to take a while. This construction has been going on for seven months so far. It should be completed with two years.