Luxury condo in downtown Fort Lauderdale finally shakes boil-water order after 23 days

FORT LAUDERDALE — Condos at the WaterGarden, with its swank 347 New River Drive address and stunning skyline views, sell for around $1 million. But for 23 days, the hundreds of well-to-do people who live there were warned not to drink their own tap water because it wasn’t safe.

A cast-iron pipe that serves their building and theirs alone broke on Sept. 7, forcing the city to issue a boil-water order that was not lifted until Friday — one of Fort Lauderdale’s longest boil-water orders on record.

In response to the water crisis, Fort Lauderdale is fast-tracking an emergency public works project to replace WaterGarden’s failing pipe along with others on neighboring streets near Las Olas.

The project will cost an estimated $2 million, Public Works Director Alan Dodd said.

“We will start digging on Monday and have it completed in one month,” Dodd said.

This latest incident shines an unwelcome light on the city’s ongoing struggle to replace the vintage pipes that snake underneath Fort Lauderdale streets, including Las Olas, the city’s most famous boulevard.

When the pipe broke, the city started testing the water daily, checking for bacteria and E. coli. But day after day, the tests kept failing.

By Day 20, WaterGarden’s residents — many of them retired doctors, attorneys and accountants — were fed up and wanted answers.

Commissioner Warren Sturman, who represents the neighborhood, held a face-to-face meeting with more than 100 angry residents Tuesday night to fill them in on what the city was doing to fix the problem both now and in the long term.

“We’ve been giving you water,” Sturman said, referring to the cases of water the city was sending daily to the condo. “You can do laundry with the water. If you don’t have any open wounds it’s OK to take a shower. Just don’t get it in your mouth. That being said, we need to get this water back on as quickly as possible.”

Sturman also told the residents the city was going to put their condo on the priority list to get the pipe fixed long term.

“You need to fix the infrastructure,” one exasperated condo owner told him. “This is Las Olas. This is Fort Lauderdale. And no one is going to want to come here (if you don’t).”

Sturman was sympathetic, saying it was “beyond the pale” for a boil-water order to last so long.

Last year, the city issued 142 boil-water notices. So far this year, the city has issued another 85. In most cases, the boil-water order was lifted after just a few days, Sturman said.

Under state rules, the city cannot lift the boil-water order until it gets passing test results two days in a row. Until the boil-water order is lifted, all tap water used for drinking, cooking, making ice, brushing teeth and washing dishes needs to be boiled for at least one minute.

The WaterGarden condo was under another boil-water notice last year after a water pipe broke near Las Olas. That time, the boil-water notice lasted for 18 days. Another boil-water order came in May, then another in August.

“There’s been four boil-water orders since early 2022,” resident Steve Lutz told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “A long one. Two short ones. And now this one. This one is the longest one. This one broke the record.”

To clear the pipe this time, Fort Lauderdale conducted two chlorine injections two days apart, on Sept. 24 at 25 parts per million and on Sept. 26 at 50 parts per million.

To keep the high concentration of chlorine from entering the water supply, city crews were required to shut off water to the entire building for around eight hours, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.

“You take concentrated chlorine and leave it in the pipe for three to four hours and then you flush it out afterward,” Dodd said. “After you flush it out, you have to do a bunch of testing to make sure it’s safe before you turn the water back on again. You want safety measures in place so (the chlorine) doesn’t get into the drinking water supply because it’s not safe to drink at those levels.”

That meant no tap water at all was coming through WaterGarden’s pipes during the span of time the chlorine injection was taking place. The air-conditioning in condos stopped working too, since the AC units can’t run without water.

“We had to fill our bathtubs with water again so we can flush the toilet,” Lutz said Tuesday as he and his neighbors waited for Sturman to open the meeting. “We had no hot water in the entire building this morning. I went ahead and took a cold shower. People are very, very upset about this. My friend Larry just got here for the season from Long Island. He found out about the boil-water order when he got here.”

If the chlorine injections didn’t work, the city had a backup plan: Connect the building to another pipe until a new water main could be installed.

Instead, the city is hiring Murphy Pipeline Contractors to replace aging water pipes in downtown Fort Lauderdale along the following streets:

• North New River Drive East from Andrews Avenue to Southeast Fifth Avenue
• Southeast Fifth Avenue from North New River Drive East to Las Olas Boulevard
• Southeast Third Avenue from North New River Drive East to Las Olas Boulevard
• Southeast Fourth Street from Southeast Third Avenue to Southeast Fifth Avenue.

The project will include establishing temporary connections to ensure that water service is maintained throughout construction, Dodd said.

Construction will begin on Monday with exploratory work to confirm the location of existing utilities.

Work will generally take place during the day between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Some overnight work may be required. No full closures or detours are expected.

Dodd is hoping the new pipes will cure the problem once and for all.

So are the folks who live at 347 New River Drive.

“It’s the little things in life, like coming home and washing your hands in clean water,” Lutz said. “I think people are very happy to have this behind them.”

Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com. Follow me on X @Susannah_Bryan