Gondek orders `complete' probe of ruptured pipe
Third-party review to help identify root source of water main failure
The city plans to undertake an independent review of the ruptured feeder main incident to identify why the break occurred and how future failures may be prevented.
Work is progressing concurrently on the five hot spots identified late last week, with parts from the San Diego County Water Authority arriving by truck from California Tuesday evening.
Michael Thompson, the city's general manager of infrastructure services, said that preparation will take some time as the segments must be sandblasted and epoxy coated before installation.
City officials still estimate three to five weeks for water main mayhem to subside and full service restoration to occur, although an updated timeline is expected by the end of this week.
“I know you want to understand what happened to this pipe in the first place, and I do, too,” said Mayor Jyoti Gondek on Tuesday. “It's for that reason that I called for a third party to do a complete incident review of this situation.”
On Tuesday, city chief administrative officer David Duckworth said the “framework” for the full third-party review of the 16th Avenue water feeder main break has already been established.
“We want to get ahead of and avoid a similar failure to the one that we currently, or just recently, experienced,” he said.
The review will include — but not be limited to — understanding factors that contributed to the original pipe failure, along with the city's current practices for inspection and sustainability, said Duckworth.
“It will include recommendations for specific actions to improve water supply resilience moving forward,” Duckworth said.
The review will be guided by an “expert panel” from academia, the water industry, water utilities management, engineering and government entities focused on infrastructure and resilience.
Selection of external consultants is currently being informed through conversations with the private sector and national water industry associations, said Duckworth.
Once an external consultant has been engaged and a panel established, they will confirm the full scope of the review.
The panel will ultimately provide recommendations based on its findings “that we can then action and share with Calgarians,” he said. “Together, we will come out of this stronger.”
Questions have been raised as to what exactly caused the catastrophic water main break on June 5, but there has been little in the way of answers from the city so far.
“Each failure can have different contributing factors that derive and lead to the failure,” said Francois Bouchart, the city's director of capital priorities and investment.
In some cases, there may be soils with high sulphites that corrode and break down the concrete within a pipe, and in other cases that's not a factor, Bouchart said during a Tuesday update to council.
“It's too early for us to really dig down in terms of, specifically for this pipe ... what are the contributing factors? That's the work that we're going to do as part of this review,” Bouchart said.
City officials have said that there was no indication of stress before the break.
Bouchart said previously that it was believed metal wires within the pipe “snapped,” leaving no structural integrity and allowing water to gush out in one big event.
It is not clear when the last visual inspection was conducted on the pipe, which was approximately 49 years into its 100-year lifespan.
Although visual inspections can provide condition information, acoustic monitoring (which they have in place) can also tell whether wires are snapping.
“Our acoustic monitoring didn't pick up wire snaps that would indicate that we were leading toward a catastrophic failure,” Bouchart said last week.
COMMUNITIES MUST CONSERVE WATER
The Bearspaw Water Treatment Plant remains operational, but the city's ability to transport water through various underground reservoirs is still affected by the break of the Bearspaw south water feeder main.
As a result, the Glenmore Water Treatment Plant has had to operate at a higher capacity to keep up with demand as Calgarians continue to conserve water.
Diagrams the city had provided outlining Calgary's water infrastructure had raised questions about whether places northwest of the Bearspaw plant were affected.
“Communities in the northwest have to conserve water just like everybody else within the city,” Bouchart said to council Tuesday.
“The diagrams that were provided were illustrative in terms of how we move bulk water — large amounts of water — across the city and how the failure had required us to shift the way that we move the water into those system reservoirs,” he said.
“The illustrations don't show the fact that once the water is in those pressure zones and those reservoirs, the water then actually continues to be transmitted through the smaller pipe system through the distribution system into adjacent pressure zones.”
Bouchart emphasized that the system is “interconnected” and impacts everyone.
A staff report that preceded the current emergency suggested that council adopt a bylaw to restrict household outdoor water use to two days a week, for a maximum of three hours on each of those days. As proposed in the report, outdoor watering would only be allowed between the hours of 8 p.m. and 10 a.m.
The report was originally supposed to go before the city's executive committee meeting on June 11, but was postponed until this week's regular council meeting in light of the ongoing water crisis.
Council voted unanimously to delay that discussion until the first quarter of 2025, “in order to use learnings and information from the current application of restrictions” related to the current crisis, said water services director Nancy Mackay.
BYLAW REITERATES `SERIOUSNESS'
Calgary Emergency Management Agency deputy chief Coby Duerr said Calgary stuck to the target water consumption for Monday, at 450 million litres.
Bylaw officers have had 2,048 calls since June 6 from which there have been 560 written warnings issued, along with 709 verbal warnings, said Duerr. Two violation tickets have been issued to businesses.
“We've had a total of 120 calls for service regarding the fire ban; 99 are pending investigation. Fourteen written warnings have been issued; 53 verbal warnings have been issued,” he said.
There have been four violation tickets in relation to the fire ban.
“Moving forward, unless there are mitigating circumstances the direction to our peace officers is to proceed with ticketing if there is evidence of an offence or someone contravening the water restrictions,” Duerr said.
“The specific penalty is $3,000 for an offence under the water utility bylaw, which speaks to the seriousness of this situation.”
He said it would be very difficult to believe if someone is still unaware of restrictions. “Warnings are meant to educate citizens on bylaw responsibilities to gain further compliance. We're past that point now.”
Further clarifying, Duerr said they will only be ticketing those who are either repeat or “egregious” offenders of the water bylaw.