Laredo City councilmembers are pictured during a meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020, at City Hall.

This past week, Laredo's leaders discussed the recent March and April water line breaks that interrupted numerous days of school for local children.

In some cases, the breaks involved contractors without permits which led to council discussing higher penalties.

According to Laredo Utilities Director Arturo Garcia, there were three recent line breaks, with the first one on March 19 at Los Pinos and Loma Vista. On that day, the Fiber Light subcontractors were working with cables and their equipment broke through the 8-inch line.

The subcontractors worked for AT&T, but while the company as a contractor did have their permit, the subcontractor was an out-of-town firm was not registered.

Through the proper order of events, the subcontractor would have had to have registered and finish paperwork prior to beginning their work. Due to the break they caused, Garcia said that the subcontractor would have to pay for all the expenses, $5,849.86, of the repair work done by the city.

On April 19, a Kansas City Southern contractor hit and broke a 12-inch line using an excavator that similarly saw city repair crews fixing the line. However, this break resulted in expenses reaching $17,000.76. The break was at Aguila Azteca and Loop 20.

"This one I’m still discussing with KCS, because they’re saying they were outside the easement,” said Garcia of an easement -- a right to cross or use of another’s land for specified purposes. "I am still having to do some field work to verify if this line is in the easement or not."

Further breaks were reported on past April 20 at 408 Plymouth, 114 Century Dr., Baltimore and San Francisco. At Plymouth, an M-1 Networks Contractor broke an 8-inch line with a horizontal drilling machine that resulted in a $3,077 repair expense. At Century, Azar Construction hit a 12-inch line that was repaired without the city crew. At Baltimore and San Francisco, contractors ALC hit a 2-inch water main that resulted in a repair expense of $715.88.

According to Garcia, much of the work done by contractors is done on weekends, to which city employees do not work, which is when the department will depend on the public to report activity on the right-of-way as well as the sanitary sewer lines.

Councilmember Vanessa Perez corroborated this, adding that members in her district reached out to her with concerns of demolition. To this respect, Rodriguez suggested hiring an employee or two to monitor activity on the weekend.

“You’re disrupting thousands of peoples and their homes and children,” he said. “… If we keep on catching them, guess what, with the fines themselves, it’s going to pay the (full-time employee),” he said.

Addressing the aging lines that have resulted in weeks long interruption to water services,  councilmember Vidal Rodriguez said the issues may be exacerbated with the risk of further issues erupting from permitless contractors breaking water lines.  It also doesn’t help that public trust in the utilities has suffered after years of water interruptions as a result of the aging infrastructure.

"We have to find something to address this that in the end, residents don’t have to be disturbed or they do the proper way where we don’t have these types of incidents reoccurring," Rodriguez said. "As councilmember Perez said, three in one week and they affected my area twice, its above and beyond."

With those expenses in mind, Rodriguez questioned what penalties are being assessed and set in place for contractors working without permits. Garcia responded that penalties are currently being discussed with the city’s legal team but are generally small, with first time penalties being a paltry $500.

“I need to be able to have contractors or people doing this construction to be afraid to touch our lines. There needs to be hefty finds and punishments. When I issue a stop order, that gets their attention,” Garcia said.

The penalty sum was met with surprise by the councilmembers as repair costs are well above the fine’s set amount, while they also kept in mind the overall cost of the ongoing repair estimates to address the overall water infrastructure. Garcia indicated that the cost per following infractions increase to $1,000 and $2,000 for the second and third time, respectively.

Plans to bring forth a heavier punishment for working without a permit were said to be brought forth to council, but councilmember Ruben Gutierrez lambasted the decisions by the contractors whose work impacts the city water lines and who work without permits.

"I think they should be fined twice -- one for busting our line, second for doing it without a permit," he said. "This is our city, not theirs, to come in here and busting our lines up. We have issues with our infrastructure as far as getting water to our people and these people are making it even worse for us now."

Christian Alejandro Ocampo reports on education for the Laredo Morning Times. He originally joined LMT as a photographer.