Water main break leaves at least 10 houses without water and a frozen mess

Detroit. (FOX 2) - A water main break on Grandville Street on the city's west side leaves at least 10 houses without water and a frozen mess everywhere. While several residents say they called to complain multiple times, the city of Detroit say they only received one phone call about a water main break back in 2018. 

"In my 42 years of being here, this has been one of the biggest headaches I have dealt with," said resident Jaqueline Hite. 

What's so frustrating for Hite is that she says she's been dealing with standing water on her street since at least 2016 and has documents to prove that she's been telling the city about it. 

"I've called the number at least 10-times," said Hite. 

However, Hite is not the only resident who says that standing water has been an ongoing issue. 

"It's been a horrific experience," said resident Dawn Bowens. 

"This is horrible, "said Marlon Westbrook. "This is real horrible and it ripped my bumper straight off."

DWSD say the water main break mess is not what residents have been calling about, they've been calling about catch basin blocks. In fact, there's a huge difference between the two. Water main breaks have some active or moving water, and catch basin blocks do not. 

"I can't say if there is an infrastructure problem, it has to be inspected," said Palencia Mobley of DSWD. 

DWSD say they need warmer weather to figure out what's really going on. 

"It did not get this way overnight," said Mobley. "We are being very strategic in how we deploy the work, how we investigate what needs to be done and how we design it." 

The city says in the last two years they've invested 40-50 million dollars on water infrastructure. They've also set aside an additional 500-million to upgrade systems in the city of Detroit and hope to get a lot of the improvements done in the next five years.