Calgary water emergency: Construction on hotspots continues on track

Oki Dada I’m bastage ton and good afternoon everyone construction is continuing on track on the five hotpots that are on the feeder M that round the work clock is being done by Crews of contractors as well as city workers and it’s making a very big difference towards getting the city water system back on track for the Target date of July the 5th Crews continue to cut and remove segments of the pipe where the hotspots are and that work is about halfway done the Section of pipe that have been treated are on standby and they will be brought to sight at the time that they are needed and this is because of some excellent timing and communication between Crews onsite and the fabrication shops general manager Thompson will give us an update of examples of how on-site work can shift and change and what it means I also wanted to let you know that we have worked with a company called Pure Technologies for the last few years and we have leveraged their deep experience with the oil and gas sector to come up with solutions for our water system and one of those Solutions is to implement a smart ball inspection or monitoring method for our treated water system and this is something that can be used for monitoring while there is water in the pipe this is just another example of how the city is working very closely with the private sector to improve our approach to City infrastructure and to fix this feeder M break as quickly as possible all of us are also very interested did in how much this repair job will cost and I’m happy to say that Calgary Emergency Management agency has been tracking all of these costs since the day that this happened and they are consolidating the information as they are receiving it any and every city operation that’s working on getting Calgary’s water system back on track will have uh accounting to do on this so that we can all have a fome picture and so that we can understand if there are em emergency funds that we can apply for either through the provincial or federal government and in terms of speaking of accountability general manager Thompson in the coming days will have more to share about the third party uh independent review of the incident what the framework looks like what the timing is to get people on the panel and what the standup date will be yesterday I’m happy to report that we held the line in terms of water conservation for the fifth day in a row and we used only 400 54 million lers of water and the question is can we keep this streak going and if we stick to playoffs uh I can tell you that not showering as much and not doing laundry means that we’re already trying to avoid that Jinx I want to congratulate congratulate everyone who saved water when it rained earlier this week so that you’d be able to do things like water your flowers and your Gardens there is one person who reported saving 50 gallons which is about 200 l of rainwater for their Gardens and outdoor plants and that’s about the same amount of water that’s used in a dozen toilet flushes so it’s an amazing example for us to follow and it really gives you an idea of how much water we used to consume and how we’ve been doing a great job of cutting back and we have a warm weekend forecasted ahead of us so it’s a good time to think about ways that you can stay cool and save water you might want to check out a movie in the theater you might want to go hang out in the mall and maybe you’ll head up to the mountains or down to the basement but it’s a good idea to think about all of those ways that we can save water for life-saving measures like firefighting and that’s an important point that we need to make I want to commend the Calgary Fire Department in their work to put out a couple of fires in our city in the last couple of days yesterday one fire was caught early and it only required about 600 600 L of water to put out there was another fire earlier today and it involve businesses along McLoud trail that one used about 20,000 liters to be contained the fire department thanks all of you in Calgary satina Nation Strathmore chesterr and Erry for your efforts in water conservation so that the crews can have a safe environment within which to fight fires an acting fire chief Deborah bergus said that a fire hose full of water is and this is where I quote her a literal Lifeline for our firefighters who who are inside a burning building so thank you for helping keep our firefighters safe by doing simple things like skipping a hair wash or using hand sanitizer instead of soap and water I will now invite SEMA deputy chief Kobe derer up for his update thank you mayor good afternoon thanks for joining us today and a special thank you to our Media Partners for helping to broadly share important information with calgarians as things continue to unfold in this situation the pipes from San Diego are in the process of being sandblasted and coated and we hear more details about the site and repair from general manager Thompson as the mayor mentioned while we while we again met our daily reduction Target yesterday consuming 554 million lers of water we still need you to continue to conserve water as you Happ been make every drop count as we mentioned yesterday we have been working closely with the Calgary construction industry to open two locations on the B River to provide nonpotable water for construction work only I am pleased to say one of these locations is now open at the West Baker Park boat launch the second site for non-potable water will be open tomorrow afternoon in the south at the Ogden boat launch please note that the Ogden boat launch will be closed for regular use while the non-pod able water is being distributed the West Baker Park boat launch will remain open at this time access to this non-potable water is only for contractors with active development agreements and permits commercial landcap companies bulk water station users those with hydrant connection unit agreements and contractors working for capital projects for the City of Calgary and Regional customers this temporary service is free of charge and will be the responsibility of the end user to ensure that the water is appropriate for its intended application I want to emphasize that river water is not safe for drinking it is only to be used for commercial construction and Landscape activities as a way of helping the industry get through the stage four water restrictions lastly we are looking at options to expand the availability to other users in the future this water is not currently available to the general public we have received some questions about the status of pools at the beginning of this event we asked high water users to close in support of water reductions efforts we closed City of Calgary facilities and reducing and reduced wash washing agreements or requirements sorry where we could safely do so and I want to acknowledge pools and recreation facility operators for their ongoing support support and helping us make every drop count by staying closed you are making a big difference making sure that we have the we are able to conserve our water for Public Safety purposes we know that this closure has caused concerns for hundreds of children registered in camps starting in the next two weeks swim lessons Athletes Training for important competitions and youth who are rely on jobs as their livelihood to pay for things like school and lodging I know again we know we are asking a lot of calgarians and we are requiring our partners and their patrons to share a load just a little bit longer so we can resume service in a safe and responsible way we are all making sacrifices and we generally appreciate the efforts of everyone doing their part the forecast has us heading into a stretch of warm weather in the coming days with temperatures expected to be in the mid-20s over the weekend this will be our first real test of summerlike weather under these current water restrictions some practical tips for you for this weekend cooking on a barbecue or in a one pot meal like a cot pot helps save water use compostable dishes only wash the clothes you need and reduce where you can and rewar where you can keep doing what you’re doing your efforts are taking are making a big difference make every drop count we are also pleased to see Calgary businesses rallying around the continued call to reduce water use we’ve heard from some we’ve heard some excellent stories from all over Calgary including the Alber Alberta Brewing Association sharing information to its membership on how to conserve water lastly before I move on to the DA daily status updates for 311 and bylaw I have been asked about tracking of financial cost for this event on the very first day of this event SEMA working with the city’s financial department established Citywide Financial coding to track all related expenses to this event from the cost of the materials to the work hours to contractor supports and Machinery it is all being tracked while I don’t have any precise details at this point on the totals the cost of this incident will be shared with you officers now I’ll go into those statistics officers had have had 2,29 calls since June 6 a total of 14 violation tickets have been issued to companies we have had a total of 140 calls for service regarding the fire ban 17 written warnings have been issued 60 verbal warnings have been issued and four violation tickets have been issued the total number of calls related to this water event through our 311 system is 7,630 please continue to do your part to to reduce water consumption make that make every drop count I will now pass over to General Manager Michael Thompson to give us an update on the construction good afternoon I was on site this morning to take a look at the progress to date and was inspired by the commitment and expertise of the crews all the contractors are working together to get this critical repair done Crews continue cutting and removing the existing damaged pipe so far we have completed about 50% of the cutting and removal required we have to carefully remove the damag sections so we do not damage an adjacent segment of pipe yesterday I mentioned this is a complex repair and these are not off-the-shelf parts that we are replacing every everything is custom fabricated and this line was originally installed 49 years ago the feeder man in this area is not all at the same elevation it follows the train when we exposed one of the hot spots we found the damaged pipe was in a location which changes grade and the pipe is encased in a large concrete block as you can see on this folder called a Thrust block this created a problem for the cruds as the segment of the damaged pipe cannot be removed without risk of damag damaging the adjacent pipe yesterday our team determined there’s too much risk to cut out this damage section on pipe instead of cutting out the damage section of pipe we’re going to structurally reinforce this segment of pipe prior to this discovery a contingency plan had been developed for this scenario and yesterday we enacted this contingency plan until we’ve completed the removal stage we continue to run the risk of finding something new and unexpected I’d like to update you on the two sections of pipe from San Diego they’re currently being sand blasted and coated and once that’s complete the pipes will be transported to to the construction site the pipes that were already in Calgary have been coated and are ready to be delivered to the site when we need them the team continues to visit and provide updates to the businesses and residents most impacted by the construction we remain committed to keeping you informed as we progress with repairing the feeder main I’d like to thank the communities and commuters who are impacted by the traffic detours I’m on site at various times throughout the day and I know this is a big repair job and it’s having a big impact on our community I want to thank you for your patience as we complete this complex work I’d now like to invite back mayor gondek [Music] thank you so GM Thompson talked about the complexity of this work and the impacts to surrounding businesses this week the city officially launched an open for business campaign in boness and Montgomery so if you’re looking to get your car fixed or if you’re looking for something for your pet or maybe a fun and interesting place for a date maybe you need a new tattoo I would highly recommend that you go to the businesses in boness and Montgomery and see if they can meet your needs they are still open for business and if you are planning on going to those neighborhoods please make sure that you look at the detours that are in place to get the work done on the repairs and whatever your plans are you don’t want to be the only one who’s not doing your part in conserving water during this emergency this is a city of people who come together during any type of Crisis or emergency this is a city of smart people who figure out the way forward when we’re faced with a problem the last two weeks has put those people on display and I want to thank you I’ll be with you tomorrow morning at 8:30 via live stream to report on water usage and any updates that we might have and we’ll have more information on the progress of the repair of the feeder M right here at the Emergency Operations Center tomorrow at 2 o’ with that I will pass to Sherry to field any questions from media thank you mayor car take my question is for Mr Thompson um yesterday and in previous press conferences you mentioned 5,000 km of Pipeline and 89% of them are in good to very good condition what was this speeder ranked as prior to ear thanks for the question I uh I’ll have to actually get back to you with the specifics uh on that question but I’ll I get the data and get back to you on that um as a follow up on that if you’re not sure what the feeder M was prior to this break why how can the public trust you that the 98% of the other stuff is in good condition yeah thanks for the question I’m focused on the repair right now so as I talked about before our focus is to get the five hot spots that we’ve identified fixed as quickly as possible so that we can restore uh Safe Drinking Water for our communities following that in the review we’ll be looking at all of our asset management like I mentioned before thanks um yeah ahead Wern standard with the blanket resoning has there been any how it affects some of these older neighborhoods I know a lot of them B ask there’s a lot of Redevelopment going on we’re talking about increased densification in areas obviously that have aging infrastructure and given that this is where the break occurred three blocks away from my home uh what impact will the blank resoning have and has there been any to the effect on infastructure so we’re talking about two specific things here uh today we are here to update you on the progress on the feeder main repairs and you’ve had uh several updates on how that work is going when it comes to rezoning in our city the decision that we made as a council was to ensure that we have options for housing and increased affordability and access to housing in all neighborhoods throughout our city and with that type of work whenever it comes to Redevelopment we are actively looking at infrastructure Investments as well okay and uh do you have something about do you have a question about today yeah okay um so you talked about uh uh continuous monitoring system of uh pipe while the waters in the pipe um I did some Googling yesterday and I noticed that there was a big break in Denver 1997 that prompted them to have to basically rip out their entire system is this monitoring how does it work with checking out the condition of the existing pipes similar to what was asking yeah thanks for the question so the monitoring that we have uh recently done with the robot in the pipe and inspecting uh the Integrity of the steel within the pipe and identifying hotpots that needed this emergency repair uh what we’ll be doing once we’ve got the pipe repaired and Water Service Water Service restored as we do that review and understand this incident we’ll be looking at our entire Asset Management plan and looking at what other inspections we should be doing prior to this break we were planning to inspect this pipe from the bearspaw water treatment plant uh to the memorial Pump Station that would have happened this fall and this winter thanks Scott post media yeah my my question is about that thrust BL um creating a problem for the cruise removing it uh can you elaborate about what you mean by structurally reinforcing out and can you um say which spot it was at yeah so uh thanks for the question so instead of uh originally we had planned to take five sections of pipe and physically cut them out uh remove uh the existing concrete pipe and replace it with a steel pipe and weld it in place instead of doing that on one section now we’ll go through and we’ll put a structural rebar uh cage around the existing pipe and pour concrete around that and that will give us strength uh to hold that pipe in place and so it’s a in place uh repair that we’re going to be doing on that we’ already been planning to this as a contingency and so we enabled that plan yesterday and the crews are working on it uh today the location uh is actually the the second uh from the uh north of the new five hotspots and so if you were out on site you would see it uh the second from the north and uh on this site you’ll if you go out there you’ll see we’re not cutting the pipe out uh instead we’re preparing to form uh that uh that car concrete box around this pipe and you’ll start to see rebar showing up where we’ll build build that structural reinforcement around it follow um yeah we’ve we’ve been hearing that 620 million lers a day is the average water use at this time of year I’m curious if that goes up considerably come the summertime when temperatures are warmer and drier than they are in so we know that uh temperature is one of the key factors in water use in the in the City of Calgary it typically for outdoor water use now with the restrictions that we have for outdoor water use that does level the playing field a little bit and allows us to be able to maintain the level which we have right now the restrictions that the level four restrictions that we have in place means no outdoor watering which then allows that the the the citizens that are doing the great work that they’re doing right now is exactly what we need to continue to do so that we can keep that uh that 4 50 milliliters or million lers that’s where we want to stay thanks very much Adam um on the inspection just following up car’s questions here it comes to the inspection that was planned for later this year on this entire feed pip maybe what were the what are the contributing factors to uh to lead to that inspection was there concern at all about this pipe up you know condition the Imp inspection yeah thanks for the question so we do our inspection based on uh a risk-based program uh that we run uh where we’re looking at things like the material the age the length of the pipe the number of historic brakes um soil corrosivity around the pipe uh and the condition comments from field inspections uh I looked into it after the question this pipe was rated good as we were uh looking at the 98% of the pipe that we have across the network we have over 5,000 km of pipe across the network the specific pipe of this specification have less than 10 kilometers in the network so we have of this specif the spe pipe um less than km out of that 5,000 kilm before this break there was no reason to believe there was any concerns with this just based on the fact that condition was as good prior to this incident we had no reason to believe that there were uh issues we had installed acoustical monitors this spring so that we could start to listen for any wire uh breaks that may happen because we do know pipes of this type have wire breakage and so that’s why we install those acoustical monitors and we were going to go through and do a complete inspection this fall and winter uh calgarians are using less treated water due to infrastructure issues not lack of water but inability to access it um is this uh volume of unused water being held Upstream at any point uh to save it for let’s say a drought or fing purposes so there from an upstream perspective the City of Calgary obviously pulls from the rivers both The Bu and the elbow Rivers uh to be able to support water for the City of Calgary we are pulling a bulk of the water right now through the Elbow River and Through the elbow or through the Glenmore um Reservoir as for Upstream that is not the city of Calgary’s purview and so what they are doing from a perspective Upstream is not something I can comment on for the mayor um you told us in the recent updates uh that the city got approval from The Province to pull water from B River construct quote unquote as many houses as possible uh does Calgary have the infrastructure to sustain your personal growth development plans uh for the city and what level of growth can we actually sustain given we don’t know the condition of our infrastructure So speaking directly to the question of uh having permission from the provincial government to use non-potable water to draw water from the river for construction purposes this was something that we needed to do to keep the construction schedule on track we know there are a lot of folks out there who are building homes and we are in a situation in Calgary where we are seeing about 96,000 people having moved to our region last year and to keep Pace with those folks needing places to live construction needs to keep pace and the growth strategy that the City of Calgary has implemented that has been endorsed by city council excuse me recognizes that we have to have have not only housing but also the important infrastructure that goes with it and we continue to make investments in that regard thank you mayor any final questions Carrie Carri um again for Mr Thompson um if that P was rated good um how should calgarians feel about the 98% of pipes that you’re telling us are good to very good yeah so thanks for the question like I said we have over 5,000 km of pipe across the city of that over 460 km is feeder m which is greater than 500 mm of that 187 km which is the pre-stressed concrete cylindrical pipe and of that uh we have 9.2 km of the specific type of that pipe as we look at our entire Asset Management plan like I said we take a risk-based approach and obviously when we do our review we’ll be reviewing this incident and applying it to how we do our asset management across the entire network on the acoustic can you clarify a little bit had you guys had you started that monitoring program or did you just installed it and then I’m wondering if you have installed a similar monitoring program the acoustic Style on other pipes and why you chose those pipes thank you we do have acoustic monitoring uh in a number of locations across the city uh we had recently installed the acoustical monitor on this specific pipe uh this spring and it hadn’t uh picked up any uh sounds of the pipe snapping until we actually had the pipe incident where uh we had the major rupture a couple weeks ago anything that’s correct okay folks that’s all we have time for today thank you very much for the job you do we will see you tomorrow at 2:00

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said on Thursday that construction on five hotspots on the water feeder main is continuing track, following its break.

“Crews continue to cut and remove segments of the pipe where the hotspots are, and that work is about halfway done,” she told media.

Gondek also said sections of the pipe that have been treated are on standby and will be brought to the sites as needed.

Michael Thompson with the City of Calgary said the pipes shipped up from San Diego, Calif., are currently being sandblasted and coated.

Water use in the city continued to hold the line, but with a warm weekend ahead, Gondek said “it’s a good time to about ways to stay cool and save water.”

It was also announced Thursday that members of Calgary’s construction community can access non-potable water from the Bow River at two sites in the city.

But Coby Duerr with the Calgary Emergency Management Agency reiterated that it was not safe for drinking and it was only to be used for commercial construction and landscape activities.

“The water is not currently available to the general public,” Duerr said.

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