Calgary water main break: Officials provide update on day 11 of crisis | FULL

little for just on the stuff they found when they were doing their final robotic robot we were all hoping it nice to meet you how are you Caroline can you ask if they found any dinosaur bones yeah okay while they’re Excavating right UFO yeah oh yeah so I did M here and then uh yeah I was trying try City I was covering City at the I just again just thought I can do that job do that J they just but time so I finally got a job oh I did geted to goal care e St that hopefully we won’t be to Too Much long Sher yeah can you do me a favor and just go say hello we’re just doing a sound check I can see our speakers are coming in this is just a sound check this is just a drill I remembered a hair brush today my mother is like uh do you own a brush lady hey oh yeah for sure for sure Hi how are you great update today every day great job on W Le like can do love the prop looks good okay everybody Are We R Doug you’ll tell us when good afternoon thank you for joining us again we’re here at the emergency Operation Center the city of Calgary’s update from the Calgary emergency management Agency on the 16th Avenue pipeline update today you’ll be hearing from Calgary Emergency Management agency Chief Sue Henry City of Calgary mayor jod gondek City of Calgary Capital priorities and Investments director Francois bushard and we have City of Calgary natural environment and adaptation manager Nicole Newton we’ll hear their updates we’ll take your media questions and with that I’ll hand it over to Mayor gondek thank you thank you Oki umage da NADA ton and good afternoon everybody Happy Father’s Day to everyone out there who’s celebrating and in particular to the dads who are working on these repairs we apologize that you have to be away from your families and we greatly appreciate the work that you’re doing so happy Father’s Day to everyone we have three significant updates for today firstly the robotic review that was done on the remaining 300 M of the feeder M that is exposed right now indicates that there are no further breaches so we are in good shape we will be addressing those five hot spots as we indicated on Friday second bit of good news is that we are partially reopening 16th Avenue at 11: p.m. and Calgary doca will be updated with the maps that you’re going to want to look at thirdly heavy equipment is arriving tomorrow to address those five hotspots that need to be fixed we are going to be moving into repair mode on those tomorrow and we are doing that work concurrently and to let you know that the main break that occurred has been fully repaired and we are now focused on knocking off the other five and again the work on those will happen at the same time to give you an idea of what’s been happening behind the scenes we have now engaged with six private sector Partners to do various things on this job those are Standard General voer St whistle lbco Associated engineering and pure Technologies very big thank you to these organizations that are doing important work for us we also convene two round taes over the weekend with some other sectors to talk about their ideas and how they might work in this situation we’ve got two more of those planned over the next couple of days we’ll be talking to experts in heavy construction as well as technology there are professionals from the oil and gas sector who sat down with our engineers and hydrologists again to exchange ideas on what they’ve experienced in the projects that they’ve worked on and how we might be able ble to leverage some of that information and experience on the situation that we have before us so this really has been in all hands on deck approach and I want to thank the number of people who put up their hands and said we’d really like to come and talk with you about where we could be helpful and I just want to be clear with everyone on the three stages that we need to undertake on this repair work firstly we need to keep water flowing to your homes right now and that means taking care of the Glenmore facility in including having any contingencies in place secondly we need to get the repairs done as quickly and safely as we possibly can on that stretch along 16th Avenue and right now we’ve got one out of the six fixes done there’s five more that we need to address and that work starts tomorrow to get that done is critical because then we can turn on the tap at the bearspaw treatment facility again so that’s second the third thing that we will need to do is a fome review of this whole feeder m as well as a full incident review with full transparency to the public with that I’m going to turn things over to Calgary Emergency Management agency’s Chief Sue Henry thank you mayor good afternoon I’d like to start by acknowledging that this is Father’s day and that we’ve had a number of dads on our crews and currently downstairs at the Emergency Operations Center and other locations across the city working at all hours trying to get you back into service thank you to them and all of our city Crews including firefighters bylaw officers roads operators and Transit operations currently on shift now spending time away from their families to serve our Citizens First I’m happy very happy to see that we’ve hit a record low in our water use on Saturday thank you calgarians for stepping up again to give us amazing reduction in water use your thoughtful actions towards water use can make a big difference we will need to keep these efforts up for longer as we anticipate the current water restrictions will re in effect for 3 to 5 weeks longer let’s embrace the community Spirit to get through this keep sharing the creative ideas and solutions for reducing and reusing water to stay inspired and committed to supporting these initiatives together I’ve seen your photos of the innovated containers that you’re using to collect rainwater and my team has shared many of the ways you are saving every precious drop if everyone contributes a million small reductions can make a significant impact to help us get through this F F throughout all of this our emergency Operation Center remains open with a state of local emergency in place and the municipal emergency plan activated in effect to help coordinate and prioritize the response as we work with Crews contractors and partners to get this massive repair done and Water Service restored for you yesterday was neighbor day and I want to share a message of love from some neighbors far away along with parts from cities across North America the city of San die Diego was able to send us a length of pipe we need to make these critical repairs and with that they sent a message of Hope thank you to the county of San Diego we’re grateful you are in this fight with us and your message of support has up uplifted a lot of people here in Calgary this is an amazing example of the kind of caring we’re seeing in Calgary in so many places so thank you a quick update on the numbers we’re seeing from baw and 311 to date we’ve received 6,214 calls calls related to the water feeder main break with 1,895 related to water misuse the majority of these have been resolved with 54 remaining cases that our officers are working on today we’ve now issued 537 written warnings and have addressed 638 concerns through education for the fire ban we have received a total of 334 calls with 18 cases remaining open on 311 calls we current ly have no wait times as of this morning and we encourage calgarians to continue to use the 31 app or Calgary doca to make your service requests on the bottom of the app there’s a banner that you are able to tap to submit an online request in order to help you prep for tomorrow morning’s commute there are some changes to be aware of as we move through our repair work unfortunately our road situation may get a bit worse before it gets better as the mayor mentioned the eastbound Lanes of 16th Avenue Northwest were the the initial break happened will reopen later today to allow a two-way traffic setup of one lane in each Direction while repairs continue on the westbound two lanes this will allow eastbound traffic to flow however at nearly the same time in order for us to get started on the repairs further up the line we will be closing a section of 16th Avenue from 46 Street Northwest to 45th Street Northwest as well as a second section from 43rd Street Northwest to boness Road which will impact traffic 16th Avenue will be closed in both directions and the closures are expected to be in place while we are completing these critical replayers please go to Calgary doca for the most current information we know this will add traffic congestion and you need to expect delays if you are moving through this area however these closures are a positive step and the right direction towards restoring the water service we are moving quickly we know the mergency you feel to get back to normal as quickly as possible and I can assure you that our teams feel that too we’re making all the efforts to bring you back to normal Service as quickly and as safely as we can I also want to thank you for the messages of support I will be taking a few days off so you will hear from deputy chief Kobe derer for the next few days and thank you for all that you are doing to keep the water use down keep doing what you’re doing and we can get through this together I will now pass to director franois buer good afternoon um as you’ve heard already I can now confirm that we’ve concluded the inspection on the remaining 300 M of pipe and the preliminary results indicate no new hotspots have been identified we are developing an inspection plan for the rest of the feeder Main and I will share more information as that evolves in terms of the original break the work continues to repair that break and significant progress has been made yesterdays our crew finished protecting the new segment of pipe from corrosion and the final inspection of the pipe was completed today Crews have removed water from the site due to yesterday’s rain and we’re now back filling the site and moving equipment out of the area this is a major milestone in our response to this dras break but the work in continuous collaboration is not yet done as announced on Friday further investigation of the critical water feeder break and identified five additional hotspots that needed to be addressed to repair this important piece of infrastructure we’ve reached out to municipalities and water utilities across North America to secure the parts and pipes needed for these additional repairs fortunately we’ve been able able to secure the parts we need and those are on the way now as Chief Henry shared with you two of the pipe segments are on their way from our neighbors in the South and I personally want to thank San Diego County Water Authority for helping us out repairing the damaged sections remains our top priority initial inspections and site prep work are already underway and construction on those hotpots will start tomorrow June the 17th and I want to reiterate that we will be doing those repairs concurrently if you are in the area today you may receive a visit from our teams who are sharing updated information on construction that will mobilize very quickly construction details are evolving and we’re updating Community associations business Improvement areas local businesses and residents as information becomes available our Consultants contractors increas remain hard at work to support the repairs being undertaken the area May notice increased construction activities during the development of our staging areas the presence of heavy equipment and construction vehicles and the finalization and the establishment of new detours as identified by Chief Henry Cruise will be working 24 hours a day and will attempt to mitigate noise throughout the night we are actively looking at ways to speed up the work while focusing on health safety and the quality of work as a reminders calgarians we are working around the clock to finish this work and restore normal water operation our estimates shared on Friday June the 14th still hold at 3 to five weeks to complete the additional repairs we are actively looking at ways to speed up work while focusing again on on health safety and quality of work I want to thank you and our partners near and far for your continuous support as we navigate the water restrictions together I will now hand over to Nicole Newton good afternoon Calgary I know that over the last week we’ve been calling upon all calgarians to make changes to how they use their water you have already done a great job in taking these steps and cutting back your efforts are making a difference but we must use less water as you heard on Friday we now have a clearer understanding of the feeder M’s conditions and the estimated repair timelines of 3 to 5 weeks until the feeder man is fully operational we need to use 25% less water every day our Collective efforts do and will add up on Saturday our water use hit a required 25 5% reduction however earlier in this week we experienced concerning Trends we are in a state of local emergency and it’s critical to continue to hit our water Target if we regularly exceed this target by 25% or this target of 25% we will run out of water and this means when you turn on your TAP no water will come out we all must make every drop count we need all calgarians at home and at work to step up their conservation efforts and to keep it up every single day to help ensure we have the water we all need and I am confident we can all come together as a community all calgarians need to build upon the actions um that many of you are already taking to tackle the biggest water users in your home and to do just a little bit extra here’s how whether it’s a front Lo or a topl load washing machine they are one of the biggest users of water inside your home in addition to running full loads of laundry reduce the number of loads you do each week trim back to one to two loads by sorting your laundry and only washing what is absolutely essential toilets are next even if you have a low flush toilet as um as much of you as many of you do you can skip a flush adopt and if it’s yellow it’s mellow and if it’s brown flush it down routine skip skip a minimum of two flushes per day every time you skip a flush you can save 6 lers by adopting this routine collectively as a city of 1.4 million million people we could save three Olympic swimming size pools or approximately 450,000 of these 5 gallon jugs turn off your water softener this can save approximately 200 L every time it Cycles that’s roughly 10 of the blue 5 gallon water jugs thank you for sticking to your showers instead of bath reducing the number of minutes you’re in the shower to 3 minutes or less shortening a shower from 5 minutes to 3 minutes can save 20 L of water equivalent to approximately one blue gallon jug everyday collectively that’s 1.4 million jugs we can increase the savings by reducing the number of showers we take every week you’re already waiting to run the dishwasher until you have a full load and keep it up now try to Str stretch out how often you run the dishwasher even just by one day consider low prep meals reusing cups throughout the day and even using compostable dishes over the next few weeks many of you are already turning off your Taps while you brush your teeth or shave when you wash your hands or face you can also help turn off the tap when you lather up try using a wash basin to collect this water throughout the day and use it to flush your toilet at the end of the day have you checked your Taps for leaks yet now is the time a small stream of water from a faucet can waste over 15,000 L per month that’s 2,000 blue jugs turn off the valves of unused sinks or toilets uh as a precautionary measure all of these actions while they may seem small collectively do add up businesses also play a critical role in helping reduce our water demand making up 32% of Cal water consumption we’ve heard across the city of many actions that businesses have taken to reduce their water use from cutting back on their operations and making small changes in how they run their business to use less water many of our largest industrial water customers are already reporting a 25 to 30% reduction during this time all businesses need to make every drop count and use less water uh the time the time to take action is now and we’re we’re offering guidance on how businesses can do more as we approach the warmer days across uh the warmer days across our city buildings we’re making changes to how we cool our buildings and we’re asking businesses to to do the same if your business uses a water cooling system to run the air conditioner in your building adjust the temperature 1 or 2° warmer to help use less water where you can use fans or open windows for our restaurant and hospitality and service Industries look where look where you use water in that is essential or non-essential in your operations and consider if you can do things differently to use less water for example at restaurants you’re encourage encourage your customers to request for a glass of water um rather rather than automatically providing a jug or filling their glasses at the table be upfront with your customers and guests about how what you are doing uh how you are doing your part to conserve water during this time and how they can support you in your efforts at hotels talk to your guests during their check-in or display information in rooms and how they can reduce water during their stay by reusing towels taking shorter showers or turning off the Taps when not in use and for everyone let’s spread the word talk to your employees about what you are doing to save water remind your friends and your family and spread the word on social media let’s get talking about the importance of making every drop count we must use less water please visit Calgary doca for more water saving tips and we all we need all calgarians at home and at work to step up your conservation efforts to help keep us on track to meet the 25% reduction Target together we can make every drop count thank you thank you and just to build on uh what Nicole was saying I know that many of you have asked um whether businesses using less water could be the best solution and I can tell you this if you imagine that you have three glasses full of water and you drank down one of them that’s the consumption from the business sector the other two glasses that you have that’s what we’re using in our homes so it’s still really important for all of us as individuals in Calgary in Strathmore chesterr airry and sutina to do our part and to build on some of the examples that were given to you let me tell you how it adds up one fewer flush from every household saves 12 million lers of water each day one fewer run of the dishwasher Citywide can save up to 17 million lers of water and if every household does one fewer load of laundry that’s 90 million lers of water that could go towards emergency firefighting or the water that hospitals need to save lives as calgarians I know we are ready to rise to the occasion and the time is now keep doing what you’ve been doing you did such a great job yesterday in reducing your water usage to 438 million lers that is fantastic as a result our supply remains in good condition so let’s keep doing what we’re doing please keep talking to your friends and your family and encourage every encouraging everyone to do the same and we can get through all of this together we will see you tomorrow morning at 8:30 and we’ll be back here here at the Emergency Operations Center tomorrow afternoon at 2 with updates have a great day right for questions yeah all right we’ll take your questions anyone Caroline um what are where the plans at right now in terms ofes so the plan right now is to make sure that we fix the hotpots and get the tap going from the bearspaw facility in a fome way so we can get water throughout the city the contingency plans that we are looking at continue to be worked on to figure out which one is the best whether it’s an Overland solution or some other networking of pipes to get that water flowing uh we continue to work on those Solutions and if they’re needed if Glenmore is uh having a little bit of trouble then we will put those into effect that’s what we’re waiting for to see if there will going to be trouble or is that a plan that will go there’s contingencies in place if it’s needed right now it’s not needed because we are able to keep up with the demand because people have cut down on their water usage so the amount of water that’s flowing from the Glenmore facility is enough to meet Demand right now I want to ask you about the um contain sorry inspection plans um being developed for the rest of infrastructure given that this happened and it probably shouldn’t have done because the stuff wasn’t as old it should have been before this happen what are we seeing in terms of um looking at other infrastructure conducting those inspections and doing that on a proactive basis so I can tell you that uh the type of monitoring and modeling that’s done on infrastructure like this happens on a regular basis the teams do this um every year the uh the indications this year were that we had to do some maintenance work on this particular infrastructure piece so this water feeder M had work done on it in April to uh add some valves and to add acoustic uh sensing technology and there was work planned for winter the kind of work that has to be done on this type of infrastructure needs to be when the flow is at its most minimum and the winter months are the best time to do that so between the maintenance that was done in April and the maintenance that would have been done in Winter we had this incident sorry just bruining it out though I mean in Calgary’s General infrastructure I mean 30% of I think water infrastructure in Canada is beyond its life span so what are we doing proactively aside from just this break to make sure this may be a question for you make sure that we’re not going to face a situation like that and to address things a bit a bit quicker and a bit a bit more let me start with this when we’re putting in any new infrastructure we are using different materials so any of the feeder Ms that are going in now as a result of neur communities are made of a different material so we’re not using something that could be compromised in this manner and so we continue to also look at technologies that would help us understand the state or the condition and I want to remind everyone that the life cycle of this particular piece of infrastructure infrastructure was 100 years so it wasn’t at a failure point and I’ll let Mr buard weigh in yes and thank you for the question and in terms of the Investments that we make we have an ongoing annual program that looks at both the smaller water pipes as well as these larger feeder Ms so every year we look at different sections of our system to determine what the condition is and that is also so supplemented by modeling of the behavior of the pipe over their age based on the materials that they’re made of so we do have an existing program we are going to supplement the program based on what we’ve seen every time that we have a failure and it’s not just when we have a failure of this magnitude every time that we have a pipe failure we understand our system better do you overhaul that program completely or do you just kind of like put band to be like oh well there was that bre I guess we should look there’s always an opportunity to overhaul the program if it’s deemed necessary um but we are also going to recognize that what we’ve done in terms of inspection also has value so we’re not going to throw that away okay question from CBC Terry yeah mayor G you mentioned this morning that um you need to better understand the timeline for restoring treated water to flow back into the system is this an additional weight on top of the three to five weeks for a pipe fix so there is no additional weight time built into making sure that the pressure is adequate and the quality of water is appropriate for um calgarians and surrounding areas to consume the time estimates that we’ve given include the repairs it includes making sure that the repairs have been done properly through an inspection and it includes doing the flow of water to clean out any debris and then after that uh test testing the pressure and testing the water quality that’s all inclusive thanks Jordan CTV yeah mayor in your opening remarks there you mentioned some discussions with private companies of course there’s a lot of engineering and oil and gas compes in calary can you elaborate on some of those discussions and would there be a point where the city does approach some of those private companies to help out more if they can so the city has already been working with the private sector there’s many people that came forward and said um even if it’s just a conversation we would really like to be helpful at this point in time so I can tell you that a lot of folks in oil and gas have been talking about their experiences with pipeline work uh they’ve also done a lot of work with um industrial Water Solutions so in speaking with our engineering and expert teams they’ve been able to exchange a lot of information and they’ve talked about what a repair might look like and so um explaining to those folks the nature of this particular pipe that it’s concrete and metal in a combination has been important explaining to them what kind of fixes we are proposing and what kind of Crews they might have to help us what kind of uh trades folks that they might have has been important as well so those conversations are are well underway okay got time for one last question we’ll wrap for today anyone I have C question em um yeah just wondering actually whether or not you can V if there are any further updates to contingency plans for fire or hospitals at this point or other health facilities so what I can tell you is that Alberta Health Service Works closely with hospitals and Urgent Care Facilities um in our city they work with the school boards as well to make sure that there are plans in place uh and contingencies if they are needed and I can tell you that Chief dongworth and his teams at Calgary Fire Department are continually assessing the situation looking at the amount of Supply we have on hand and as he has mentioned many times they’re working closely with the provincial government to see what kind of fire suppression methods could be deployed on their behalf as well anyone we are just in the process of talking with Calgary Stampede I believe they may be joining us tomorrow and we can figure out the practices that they are going to uh undertake to make sure they’re limiting their water use as well just like the rest of us all right thank you everyone uh mayor’s update will be tomorrow morning at 8:30 and you’ll see us back here at 2 thanks for joining us you for

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek delivered an update on Sunday afternoon, regarding water restrictions stemming the breakdown of a major water line 11 days ago.

In an earlier press conference, Gondek revealed that the city reached an all time low in its consumption of water on Saturday night, using just 438 million litres. Gondek also offered some Father’s Day tips, suggesting dads opt to drink beer instead of water, or avoid washing the car, and brush their teeth in the shower, if they really need to.

As Calgary officials declared a local state of emergency on Saturday over the water crisis, which is expected to last another three to five weeks, the president of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce has raised concerns about how the city’s water crisis may impact the Calgary Stampede.

“We are deeply concerned that the City of Calgary has entered a State of Emergency caused by the deterioration of Calgary’s main water feeder pipe, particularly given the issues will take an additional three to five weeks to resolve,” said Deborah Yedlin, president and CEO of the organization.

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