L.A. water main breaks: Geyser in Valley as more gallons lost amid drought [Graphics]

Los Angeles, land of the century-old water pipes, saw its latest main burst overnight in the San Fernando Valley. A 40-foot geyser erupted in Studio City, waking residents shortly after 2 a.m. as water splashed down.

Sixty customers on Halkirk Street are without service after the 8-inch pipe broke, according to the DWP. Crews were on site and clean-up underway as of 9:30 a.m.

Los Angeles has seen some high-profile gushers this year as water mains have burst, hemorrhaging so much water it's sometimes difficult to comprehend. Meanwhile, some California cities are teetering on the brink of bone-dry. In light of the drought, the flow of water can be painful to watch.

The break in late July that flooded UCLA, as seen above, was a spectacular water-main failure. A city trunk line hasn't burst like that since 2009 -- also in Studio City -- on Coldwater Canyon Avenue. Four million gallons were lost in the '09 mega-break. That's a drop in the bucket, though, compared with what occurred at UCLA.

Then there was the Sept. 26 break on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. The 36-inch steel main was installed in 1916.

Thousands of gallons went spilling down Sunset Boulevard. Traffic was snarled and repairs lingered as crews had to lift up sidewalks to repair pipe. It was one of two breaks on Sunset in a single weekend.

We're not the only ones with ancient pipes. There are 240,000 breaks a year across the U.S., the Associated Press reports. Some of the nation's piping pre-dates Theodore Roosevelt's tenure in the White House (1901 to 1909, to be exact). Los Angeles has 7,225 miles of pipe, about a million feet of which has been delivering water for 100 years or more.

Water mains are at increasing risk of failure and the L.A. Department of Water & Power pipe-replacement rate at its current funding will be completed in 315 years.

So what's the good news?

Water main breaks are actually down -- by the hundreds -- since 2006, according to statistics from the DWP. And the department repaired many more miles of pipe in 2013 than in 2006.

“People have been saying, ‘Oh, DWP’s not repairing,’ " DWP spokeswoman Michelle Vargas told the L.A. Times. "We have been repairing, just not at the rate we want to.�

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