Despite a hot water line break in December that caused extensive damage, the $2 billion gate expansion project at Denver International Airport is still on schedule and budget.

Stuart Williams, senior vice president of airport expansion, told the Denver City Council’s Business, Arts, Workforce & Aviation Services Committee on Wednesday that a hot water line broke around mechanical equipment on the east side of the B gates on Dec. 5, setting that terminal’s work back by months. Water was coming from the pipes at a high pressure and was over 180 degrees.

“It wreaked havoc to be quite honest,” Williams said. “Water in general is a problem. Super hot water is a much bigger problem.”

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He estimated there was about $50 million in damage. An investigation is underway to determine what went wrong.

The B-east expansion was scheduled to open in January, but with this setback it is now scheduled for completion this fall. Williams said insurance will cover the cost of damages and that repairs and replacements are already underway.

“I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Williams said.

The airport was lucky that an employee with one of its contractors saw the leak and knew how to shut off the valve, airport CEO Phil Washington said.

Once the entire expansion is complete, it will bring 39 new gates to the airport by the end of this year. Throughout the rest of 2022 and 2023, 24 new concession vendors will be brought online too, and the airport announced who these vendors will be Wednesday.

Earlier this month, the city’s Office of the Auditor released a report detailing unfair practices when it comes to renewing airport concessions contracts. The opening of the new concession vendors this year will provide a chance for auditors to see if one of their recommendations is being taken into account: keeping vendor selection score sheets for transparency purposes.

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“We follow up on all of our audits, and in this case it would include reviewing whether airport management followed through on their agreement to the recommendation to keep vendor selection score sheets for new vendors,” spokeswoman Tayler Overschmidt said. “If they have retained the score sheets for the agreements with the new concessionaires, this could be an indication that the recommendation is implemented.”

The west side of the B gates has been complete and open since November 2020, and Williams said the airport has received lots of positive feedback since then.

“This was a unique situation in that we were able to open that well ahead of the others, and we could see what was working and what wasn’t,” Williams said. “Frankly, we didn’t find much that wasn’t working except on some very micro levels, but it gave us a lot of confidence going ahead with the much larger expansions.”

The rest of the project, including expansions at the A-west, B-east and C-east gates, will finish up this year, but airline relocations within the airport will continue throughout 2023 as well.

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Council President Stacie Gilmore asked Williams if the airport could help with keeping the public up to date on the project because many folks coming through might not know what is being done and what’s next. She said some kind of summary or fact sheet would be beneficial to lay out everything that is happening in one place.

“I think when people go out to the airport, they see the construction but they don’t necessarily see the end game to it,” Gilmore said. “Sometimes you can be more patient with construction, etc. if you know what’s coming next.”