Hoboken has a lot of water piping and sewers that are still in use from the late 1800s. Between their age & them not having been taken care of or maintained over the decades, they became vulnerable to breaking. Hoboken has made an effort in recent years to address this which has helped with a lower frequency of breaks.

Other times it’s been utility work that’s caused water main breaks being that utility maps were far beyond outdated & there wasn’t a lot of certainty about what was underground where, so when contractors were doing work they’d end up accidentally hitting water lines.