By: Charity Meier | Novi Note | Published March 10, 2026
NOVI — The pressure was high for Great Lakes Water Authority CEO Suzanne Coffey as she faced questions from the Novi City Council during its regular meeting March 9, two days after a second water main break within six months had caused another widespread service disruption.
The majority of the city, approximately 75%, receives its water supply from a water main along 14 Mile Road, according to Sheryl Walsh-Molloy, communications director for the city of Novi.
The frequent issues with water main breaks, like the one that occurred March 7, cause not only residents, but Henry Ford Providence Novi Hospital, hotels and businesses, including the Vibe Collection Showplace, to be without water for prolonged periods of time.
The recent break caused a water outage for over 24 hours, and those affected by the outage were still under a boil water advisory and a limited-use advisory as of press time on March 10.
The city recently recovered from a water main break in September 2025 that caused residents to be without water for one day and to need to boil water for three days and resulted in the temporary closure of several businesses and schools. Construction to repair the water main problems discovered from that incident is ongoing. GLWA officials said that construction along 14 Mile Road and M-5 is on track and expected to be completed in April.
However, city officials and residents expressed their frustration and concerns over the water main problems, which have been ongoing since 2017, according to Councilman Aaron Martinez.
“Not just breaks several times within a few years, but now they’re six months, and we’re starting to get concerned that the next one is going to be three months apart,” Mayor Justin Fischer said.
Fischer described some of the hardships the water main breaks cause, including disruptions to businesses and hotels, as well as to residential life.
“We have had our schools shut down, and that’s a big impact for the learning and mental health of our children,” he said.
“We talked about the school issues, but try bathing a child with an Absopure bottle of water. Try convincing your children who are in the bathtub to not be drinking the water when we finally do get it in. We have toilet issues; it’s very unsanitary to not be able to flush your toilet,” Fischer said.
“The frequency of what’s going on is now on the verge of kind of an emergency to me,” he said.
Coffey said that this incident was the result of transient water pressure on the already high-pressure pipe. A 20-foot section of water main at 14 Mile and Verona Street, which is located between Drake and Farmington Roads, cracked as a result of transient water pressure on the pipe, Coffey said.
According to Coffey, a power disruption within the electrical grid during a recent storm caused statewide damage, which caused power-fault transient waves, which damaged the pipe. She said that this particular pipe had been put into place in the 1970s and was supposed to be good for 100 years.
“We have different places where we have to boost pressure, because people use the water, water pressure goes down, we got to boost it, push it out farther,” Coffee said. “Our system has 800 miles of transmission. It’s really massive. One of our pumping stations lost power from the transformer of our utility provider. When that happened, we could see a pressure wave — we do have pressure monitors; you could see a pressure wave across our network — and then this pipe broke.”
Coffey said that they were going to do a forensic analysis of the situation. However, she said the evidence clearly shows that a pressure wave went through the system after the outage, and then the pipe broke.
“The transient waves that come can be very, very high pressure and even the best systems might not be able to withstand them,” Coffey said. “That’s why we are just to a point where we feel we just have to redesign these pump stations to deal with the power outages, because they’re becoming more and more frequent.”
She said that transient waves come within a fraction of a second, and it takes extremely sensitive equipment to detect them. So, they need to look at not just the pipe itself but how it is configured. She said the pipe needs to be configured so that the transient waves are dissipated and don’t travel down the pipe.
“Well, when it comes to the power interruption, I mean, I read the press release that went out. I mean, you’re not seriously blaming DTE for this, are you?” asked Martinez.
“So, DTE has a level of service to us that they did not make, right? We have a level of service to you that we did not make, so,” Coffey said.
Martinez said that it sounds like GLWAs backup electricity devices worked as planned, but the backup systems need to be better to avoid the pressure increase.
“So the transformer being out, that’s not as designed,” Coffey said. “The generator worked. The idea that they could create a pressure surge, that’s something that we are going to have to protect ourselves against.”
According to Coffey, the power surge issues are not common but manifest at the Haggerty Road Pump Station.
Mayor Pro Tem Laura Marie Casey said that people have questioned if additional developments in the area have impacted the effectiveness of the pipe. However, Casey said that the pipe in question is a transmission pipe that brings water into the city.
“So, it’s not a development issue, it really is age of the pipes and the fact that they are failing this quickly for us,” Casey said.
Coffey agreed. She said that the GLWA has plenty of capacity in its system to push more water. She said it is definitely related to the integrity of the pipes.
In addition to the issues with power-fault transient waves, the pipes seem to be deteriorating at an alarming rate. According to Coffey, the pipes should not be failing this early. She also said that the pipe in question was inspected five years ago and had “zero defects.”
“We’re scratching our heads about this and our consultants are too,” she said. “What we’ve come to is that these pipes are degrading faster than anybody thought, even the experts. So, we’ve got to think out of the box and we got to think quickly because this is not going to cut it.”
Councilman Dave Staudt questioned Coffey as to why the GLWA, which has the ability to borrow funds, was not able to acquire the $1 billion annual budget it said was necessary to repair the system, but instead has a $75 million annual budget for repairs.
“Let me explain. We have 800 miles of transmission. Sixteen percent of those 800 miles are past their useful life, their growth life. Sometimes things last longer. A billion dollars is what it would take to replace those pipes. Seventy-five million dollars a year is what it takes just to not make it worse every year. We use that $75 million a year just to not have that 16% get bigger,” Coffey said.
Although they don’t have the $75 million currently, they have set aside $7.5 million.
According to Coffey, the GLWA operations and maintenance budget is about $450 million per year. She said they bond out a lot of their capital improvement projects. Fifty percent of that budget is debt service and pay-as-you-go capital, and 50% is operations.
“So, you have the ability to borrow money, and so the idea that the billion dollars is unobtainable to you is really not true,” Staudt said. “You could borrow the billion dollars to fulfill your requirements to provide water to your customers, one of which is us.”
Coffey said that there is a quandary with just borrowing the capital to pay for the massive annual repairs. She said that the law would require them to increase customer charges in order to pay the debt service for funds they borrow. She said they cannot go below the debt service coverage ratio of 1.2, which is where they are at now.
“When water and sewer is failing on a regular basis, there is no excuse. Money is not the excuse,” Staudt said.
“As a City Council member, I expect you to replace the pipe from whatever point to another point, like you are doing on the west side. I don’t care how much money it costs,” he said. “You know it isn’t your problem. It’s the state government’s problem. It’s the federal government’s problem. We have to have water.”
According to Martinez, the city and its businesses have seen economic loss in the millions because of the water issues.
“This is an infrastructure emergency, and I can’t impress that upon you enough,” Martinez said.
He asked her how many other communities have undergone five or six water main problems in a short time span.
“No, I think this is the worst,” Coffey said. “I do think you are unique. I would say we have a lot of issues in Detroit. Detroit has a lot of issues, but not repeated. Not in this length of time.”
The problematic pipe was replaced on Monday. Workers working on that pipe discovered another problem in an additional segment of the pipe. That issue is expected to be repaired by March 13.
Coffey said that repairing the water mains that affect the city of Novi, as well as five other communities, is the GLWA’s highest priority right now.
Water testing in Novi began on March 9 and was expected to be completed by March 11. If the water is cleared, the city’s boil water advisory will be lifted.
Coffey said they have invested about $150 million into the system in the Novi area and employed best practices, but that is not good enough.
“We need an effective, comprehensive, long-term solution,” she said.
She said one of the things the GLWA would be doing is running acoustic fiber optic cable in the pipes so that they can hear when a wire breaks. They will also be working more closely with the city to fix the problem.