On Tuesday, an outage on Romană Street. On Wednesday, an outage on Decebal Street. Two days in a row, two ends of town, one cause — a failure in the pipes. In its 23 June notice, „Apă-Canal Ungheni” says something that, read carefully, explains a whole summer of dry taps: „the appearance of failures on the distribution network cannot be anticipated”.
A resident’s natural question is: how come, if we keep hearing that „Ungheni’s water is being modernised”, with European funds and projects worth tens of millions? The answer lies in a distinction that official statements gloss over — the difference between the water coming towards the town and the pipes through which it reaches the tap.
The money went to the source, not to the pipes under the streets
The big project everyone talks about — the „Rehabilitation and extension of the Zagarancea–Cornești trunk main”, worth about 32 million lei, through the Centre Regional Development Agency — has three parts: roughly 15 kilometres of trunk main, the modernisation and doubling of the treatment plant’s capacity, and two new pumping stations. All of it concerns the abstraction, treatment and transport of water. The distribution network inside the town — the pipes under the streets — is not included.
Likewise, the European investment completed in 2022 rehabilitated and extended 19.7 kilometres of network, and a SCADA monitoring system was installed in 2025. Real steps — but ones that touch a small part of the municipality’s roughly 139 kilometres of water pipes.
A half-century-old network
This is the heart of the problem. According to a 2015 feasibility study, more than 80% of the network is cast iron and steel, aged 45–60 years; about 56 kilometres — 41% — exceed 60 years of service, and 87% pass 30 years. The distribution network, a United Nations Development Programme release noted at the time, „has not been renovated, with few exceptions, since 1978”.
A cast-iron pipe laid in the ground in the 1970s or 1980s does not break on a schedule. It breaks when it gives way — and it gives way more and more often. That is why the operator is factually right when it says a particular failure cannot be „anticipated”. What can be anticipated, though, is the trend: on such a network, failures are not a surprise but a statistical certainty.
The figures of a summer of dry taps
The operator’s own reports show the scale. In 2024 there were 308 interruptions to the water supply in the municipality, of which 270 were unplanned — that is, failures. That comes to around five a week, each lasting more than seven hours on average. That same year, about 21% of the abstracted water was lost along the way, through leaks and technological consumption; and the dispatch line took several thousand calls, most reporting the lack of water.
It is also fair to say Ungheni is no worse off than the rest of the country — on the contrary: the national average loss in 2024 was about 27%, higher than the Ungheni operator’s. The Court of Accounts blames inherited infrastructure, „with advanced or 100% wear, built in the 1990s” and earlier. Between 2014 and 2021, Ungheni received some of the country’s largest investments in water and sewerage. The problem is not that no one invests — it is that the pace at which old pipes are replaced is far slower than the pace at which they age.
What comes next — and what does not yet
When the treatment-plant project is finished, Ungheni residents should have cleaner water and steadier pressure where it enters the town. That does not change the state of the pipes under the asphalt. In public records and in the operator’s reports there is, for now, no dedicated programme for the large-scale replacement of the old distribution network inside the town, beyond routine maintenance and an annual fee — about 3.4 million lei in 2026 — paid into a development fund.
Until then, the 1970s cast iron stays under the streets. And in summer, when consumption rises and pressure pushes through tired pipes, it will keep giving way — somewhere, a few times a week. The modernisation of Ungheni’s water is real; it is just that, for now, it shows more at the plant than at the tap.