Thanks...but this is a quote from a facilities report...later quoted in the Washington Post...which I suspect is overblown (?) to excite the populace and politicians to require a setback from the pipes. I suspect a setback from a two hundred ton explosion would be unnecessarily costly.
Carrying drinking water: up to about 77" diameter. Buried, usually beneath streets and sometimes in tunnels in soil or in rock up to some 150' deep. Mostly reinforce4d concrete: rarely steel. Pumped to water-towers and distribution.
Washington Post quotes water transmission lines
"highly pressurized pipes that can explode with the force of 200 tons of dynamite"
have they dropped a decimal point here?
Thats a lot of dynamite!
It's been years since I've tried such calculations and now couldn't even try...