WATCH: What’s behind Vernon’s water main breaks?

VERNON – Four water main breaks Monday left more than a hundred homes without water. It isn’t the first time breaks have made headlines in Vernon in the last year. In October part of a city dump truck fell through a road. The sinkhole was likely caused by water flow from a broken main. Last December the art gallery flooded when a pipe ruptured downtown. While that may seem like a lot to go wrong, Vernon’s outgoing mayor says the number of breaks isn’t unusually high.

Rob Sawatzky says we are just hearing more about them when they happen.

“We have a very proactive communications strategy now the last couple of years so the public and the media are hearing about water line breaks that they would have never heard about before,” says Rob Sawatzky.

The city says there have been 28 water main breaks so far this year. That’s compared to 25 last year and 33 in 2012.

“I would like to say that we have more breaks so I could chastise the senior levels of government for not sending us …enough money to maintain our aging infrastructure but actually our breaks are not any more than usual,” says Sawatzky.