Calgary water emergency: Officials urge continued conservation as temperatures expected to rise

Oki Dada amage ton and good afternoon everyone since the start of this water main break we’ve saved nearly 2 billion that’s billion with a B liters of water compared to our typical usage at this time of year this amazing number goes to show how when we work together even the small decisions we make amount to a lot small decisions like capturing cold water as you’re running the tap for hot water to come out or skipping a shower all of those small decisions matter and they add up and while we’re now on a 6-day streak of keeping our water usage below the threshold there’s also a concerning trend of increased usage over the past few days and it’s expected to be a hot weekend so let’s make sure that we’re trying to conserve water as much as possible yesterday we used 460 million L of water which is up slightly from Wednesday and also up a little bit from the day before remember it’s easy to reduce your water usage one less flush a day for all households in this city amounts to 12 million liters saved that’s just one flush now in terms of work on the feeder M hotspots things are progressing to plan in Montgomery and cutting and removing of the hotpots should be completed today this morning we saw a video showing the preparation work the sand blasting and the coating of the replacement pipes is underway and it’s almost complete things are looking pretty good for us to hit that 5th of July time frame earlier this morning I told you that I will be taking steps to secure the safety of our water infrastructure I will be asking City Administration and pressing to find out what we need in terms of budget numbers to ensure we have the technology and inspection methods that we need to ensure that we understand the state of our underground water infrastructure we’ve also got an independent review of this incident underway the framework has been created for this it will now go to uh choosing a panel and then standing up that panel and I’m going to take up the offers of support from both the provincial and federal government both of whom have offered to help in any way that they can I’ll be calling in all favors and I will not be leaving anything on the table and I will be sharing all of our findings from this catastrophic failure of our water infrastructure with my colleagues in the big city mayor’s caucus I reached out yesterday to the chair and vice chair indicated that any lessons that can be learned from our city should definitely be applied to other places throughout our country if this can happen here in a relatively young City like ours it’s possible that it could happen anywhere so it’s important that we work together with that I will turn things over to SEMA Chief Sue Henry thank you mayor good afternoon and thank you for joining us today we appreciate our Media Partners for helping us to share important information to calgarians as this situation progresses we have had a state of local emergency in effect since last Saturday at 13:15 today we renewed it to continue to support our operations to help us get through the critical stages of these repairs the repairs to the water feeder Main Line are ongoing and we’re working as quickly and as safely as possible to restore City water as the mayor mentioned we again met our daily reduction Target consuming 460 million lers of water while we met the target there was a slight uptick in usage from the day before we still need you to continue to conserve water as you have been for the last several days and weeks especially as we head into the weekend of warmer weather we have opened a pickup location for Calgary’s construction industry at the Ogden boat launch on the bo River to provide non-potable water for construction work only and today a second site will open at Baker park I want to emphasize that riverwater is not safe for drinking and it’s only to be used for commercial construction and Landscaping activities to help us the industry get through these stage four water restrictions this water is not currently available to the general public and I know this will frustrate some people who are looking to the river as a source for non-potable water but we are working on a plan to ensure that get citizens get some access to non-potable water in the meantime please continue using your rain barrels and any water that you collect from your yards the forecast again has us heading into to a stretch of warmer weather in the coming days with the temperatures expected to be in the mid High mid to high 20s over the weekend our Calgary weather has the potential for developing thunderstorms even if they’re not in the forecast and there is a a warning on today for a thunderstorm so please take advantage of that capture the water when the rain does Fall and use it for relief for our Gardens our Lawns and any other outdoor water demands that we have most importantly please remember that the fire Bank and water restrictions remain in effect keep doing what you have been doing your efforts are making a difference to conserving water in the city a few numbers for you today our bylaw officers have had 2,300 calls since June 6th and we have issued a total of 14 violation Tiss tickets that have been issued many of these tickets were issued relating to automatic sprinkler systems these restrictions are not new these automatic sprinklers should have all had plenty of time to be shut down or reprogrammed if your sprinklers are still on you are breaking the water restriction please turn them off or you will be facing a violation ticket with the warmer weather please remember to have no open fires our fire ban remains in effect and we are out responding to calls and complaints we’ve had a total of 159 calls for service regarding the fire ban with those we have issued 18 written warnings 66 verbal warnings and five violation tickets have been issued the total of number of calls into 311 for this event have total 7,880 we are pleased to see Calgary businesses and calgarians rallying around our continued call to reduce water and again we know we are asking a lot of everyone so that we can resume service in a safe and responsible way we are all making sacrifices and we genuinely appreciate the efforts of everyone doing their part every drop counts I will now pass over to General Manager Michael Thompson to give us an update on the construction good afternoon everyone crews are continuing with cutting and removing the existing damaged pipe and this will be completed by the end of the day yesterday I mentioned this section of pipe that we’re not going to be removing but instead we’re going to be reinforcing along its length in one of the hot spots and the crews are out there today forming up uh the concrete forms that uh that reinforcement will go around materials for all of the construction continue to arrive on site today and as you heard the sand blasting and coating of the replacement pipes are underway and nearing completion welding of the new parts is starting today we understand that there’s a desire for calgarians to know more Technical and historical information about our water system infrastructure we are committed to to providing the answers we have available and anticipate that the review will take significant amount of work in this area even further the experts we rely on to supply these technical answers are also the experts all calgarians are currently relying on in the field to support the effective repair and return of our water service we’re developing an FAQ which will be going up on Calgary doca later today to support the communication of the factual technical information we are receiving questions on and we’re committed to continuously updating that section as questions arise I wanted to share a few examples of some of the FAQs you’ll start to see some people have asked if we saw physical damage on the pipes uh as we were exposing them I can tell you on that on one segment of a hot spot that we removed we did see signs of physical damage on the outside of the pipe this pipe and all the other pieces of pipe are being stored at one of our locations to be reviewed uh during the third party independent review I was also onsite this morning looking at some of the segments of pipe that have been removed and I’m Not A Pipe engineer or expert I should clarify that to begin with but as I looked at the inside of the section of pipe there were no signs of cracking and you wouldn’t know that there was damage to the reinforcing wire on the outside again these sections of segments of pipe will be kept and stored for that third party review we’ve also heard a lot of conversation around if there was any in indication of this feeder failing and I wanted to confirm that to date there had been no indication that this feeder was experiencing issues that would result in the type of failure that occurred a number of people were wondering why we weren’t inspecting this pipe and again we were planning to do a complete electromagnetical inspection of this pipe this fall or winter as I mentioned yesterday and as part of our asset management plan again we’re going to be putting up more FAQs on Calgary doca later today where you can find answers to these questions and more that you’ve been asking I wanted to thank you for your continued patience as we work to update you with this information as we’re currently focused on the repair and restoration of the Water Service we’re very grateful for the continued commitment of our teams supporting this repair as we strive towards the completion we’re also continuing to check in on the most impacted residents and businesses during this construction and I wanted to really have a special thanks to our city Crews who worked tirelessly on the original repair site and are now out working on the repairs at one of the five hotspots the knowledge these Crews gained during the original repair has provided valuable insight to complete the work at the additional sites I’d now like to turn it over to Dr Rudi thank you good afternoon everyone I’d like to take this opportunity to just talk a little bit about how we can ensure that we’re using our water safely including non-potable water again thank you so much to all the calgarians and Regional Partners who have made great efforts to conserve water during this water conservation I would like to remind folks to ensure that we are still focusing on health and safety specifically Ally ensure you’re practicing good hand hygiene making sure you’re lathering your hands that’s a great time to turn off the tap or even slow down how much water’s coming out but do ensure that you are washing your hands especially before preparing meals and as you’re handling any food when you are preparing food this is a good time to remember let’s keep our meats and vegetables separate keep hot items hot cold items cold and try not to keep anything out in the Heat or just room temperature for more than 2 hours great to think about as we’re going into the barbecues and the warmer weather coming up it’s also important to remind folks who may be using tap water for health needs flushing lines any wound care to continue to do so I’d now like to talk a little bit about non-potable or untreated water I know many folks have been collecting rainwater or finding other sources of nonpotable water I want to stress that this water is not intended for consumption we should not be using it to drink for brushing our teeth for anything entering the body if you are going to use it around the house inside the house for say washing dishes please ensure it is boiled first boiling at a rumbling boil for 1 minute before you’re using it if you are washing your outdoor vegetables with rain water we’d ask that please make sure you’re thoroughly washing them with tap water with potable water before consuming them and ensuring they are properly cooked and with that I will turn it over to Jen marar I’m here today to talk to you about how to make every drop count in our yards and we can do this by collecting rain water in rain barrels and collecting gray water from showers baths and even cooking and use it to water your yards it’s important to reduce evaporation and the way you can do that is by applying a layer of mulch wood chips and stone to your garden beds when it comes to Grass aim for a lawn that’s about 3 in long and if you do mow keep the grass clippings on on your lawn and what that does is it Shades the roots and keeps your lawn cool which will help it persist in hot and dry conditions it’s also important to retain moisture in your garden and you can do that by adding compost and ensuring that you have a nice thick layer of high quality top soil and with that I’ll pass it to marand thank you with hot weather coming this weekend we need to keep our water usage down and that means finding smart ways to stay cool if you’re obstacle person make sure you have stocked up your freezer or maybe this weekend is a good time to catch a show or head to a gallery and it’s been incredibly heartwarming to hear some of the stories from calgarians about what they’re doing to reduce their water usage 15-year-old Ashlin uses an Olivia Rodrigo song to time her short shower and 98-year-old Allan was using rain barrels to water his garden these are all great stories and I know you’re sharing them with each other while I’ve been thanking all of the people in compan comp that use water in Calgary on sutina nation in erre chesterr and Strathmore I also want to recognize the measures that Spruce Meadows has taken to save water while they do access City Water what they’ve done for the last two weeks has been to rely on their internal water supply system the series of wells and reservoirs is being used to keep their horses healthy and responsibly take care of their ground and we are very thankful to Linda and her whole team for practicing these water conservation me measures and let’s not forget the Cavalry football club those dedicated foot soldiers they also did part their part to save water during their games and they also issued reminders to their fans to make sure they were being good water stewards I’ll have more for you tomorrow morning at 8:30 via live stream and then we will be back here at 2:00 in the afternoon in the Emergency Operations Center with updates on the repairs and with that I will pass things over to Jose to field questions from the media thank you Mr CC Michael Thompson come on down um can you talk about a bit more about the physical damage on the outside of the pipe what could cause that and the significance of that versus the other ones not being D on the outside yeah uh we’re not sure what caused the physical damage on the outside of the pipe uh there’s a number of things that may have caused it when we’re installing pipes we inspect the pipes as they’re installed to ensure that there is no physical damage on the pipes uh after we install the pipes uh there can be uh other construction activities that happen near pipes uh that could potentially damage them we typically are very careful around our feeder main pipes to make sure that there’s no damage and so that’s why we’re going to be taking uh will be taking we’ve taken this piece of pipe and all the other pipe that we pulled from the hotpots to a location and we’ll be doing a complete analysis of the pipes uh during the third party review um also being a non-engineer can you talk a bit about you know when you look at the the the physical appearance of the pipe sections from San Diego they seem quite different from what we have in the ground can you talk a bit about that and just the the grafting of the two different types of pipe together yeah so the the pipe that we that we have in the ground right now I was I mentioned I was on site this morning and it’s a Concrete uh inner uh ring a fairly thick concrete inner ring with a a steel sleever around it and then uh the reinforcing wire that wraps around that uh with another layer of concrete on the outside of it the new pipe that we’re bringing that we already had three segments uh in Calgary and that we brought two in from San Diego uh it’s a completely steel pipe that will W on uh to the existing pipe and so our team’s out currently today starting uh some of the adapters that are required to fit uh these pieces together and so it’s not not just taking the new steel pipe and Welding it to the existing pipe we have to put a number of adapters and other parts on and so you’ll see a crew of welders out on all for sites that we’re doing the welding on now uh right now uh welding away and they will be welding away all weekend okay so the San Diego pipe is very similar to the three sections that Cal already had then that’s correct okay thank you may probably is or chief Henry uh is there concern that as the weathers weekend we’re going to see another big spike in water use we had rain at the beginning of the week people were able to stock out cut back but it’s going to be the first you know Summer Weekend with these restrictions in place it it definitely is uh the first summer weekend that we will have these restrictions in place we want calgarians to be a part of the solution for this and be diligent about what they use it’s a great chance to enjoy the summer weather a little bit differently than they normally would have and we need folks to continue to do the reduction measures so that we do have enough water for critical firefighting efforts as well as for drinking water for the city people that you know kidney pools or something with some of that rain water that they collected it looks clear it looks clean it doesn’t have a bunch of TOs and stuff and it is there a risk for that is that a good idea is it is going down to the river and going for so whenever folks are using any container for to store collect non-potable water it’s important to think about what you’re going to do afterwards so as I said non-potable water should not be used for consumption and if you’re going to use it inside your house for any reason boil it first right you want to make sure there’s no bacteria any microscopic organisms we can’t see in there that might make us sick after you’re done it’s really important to properly clean this we have instructions and some guidance on Alberta Health services.com bleach um or other products to make sure we’re thoroughly cleaning it before you put it back into use so like if you want you have of want rain we would say don’t be using non-potable water for any outdoor activity so if you have a little kitty pool that you’re collecting rainwater in children should not be playing in it it’s also a good opportunity to remind folks if you’re collecting rainwater keep a lid on top of it protects your children dogs other animals from getting in it also helps make sure it doesn’t turn into a breeding ground for mosquitoes hi um I this we’ve been talking about businesses and some of the impacts of not having water and I guess one of the businesses that struck me was Car Washers is there any way for them to uh get some kind of compensation for their losses we are paying close attention to how the restrictions that we put in place are impacting uh residents and businesses and when it comes to businesses like car washes I know the team is regularly in contact with them we’re listening to their concerns and we will evaluate what we can do and um when you talk about calling in favors from uh various levels of government and other partners what exactly would those kind of favors be would it be like monetary would it be like uh equipment skills technical expertise or uh and uh maybe have you asked for any help and what’s the status of that so from the day that we found out that this was going to be a serious situation I was on the phone with Premier Smith and she said anything you need from us please let us know my direct contact has been Minister mver the minist of Municipal Affairs I’ve regularly been in contact with him when there are things that we’ve needed uh I have uh relayed to him what some of the concerns of the construction industry were we have had conversations about many other ways that that they could be of assistance and so as we continue to go through this repair work and get to the restoration stage we will ask for resources as we need them and once we get into that moment where we can tally up what uh the costs have been if there is money that we can receive from either the provincial or federal government we will definitely be looking into that Sydney bizard with Rebel news U how do calgarians know this third party investigation that you initialized uh will be un what what are the insurances there so I will turn this to GM Thompson in a moment but what I would say is that I have asked our chief administrative officer David Duckworth to ensure that the review is independent that is done thoroughly and is comprised of experts and I believe GM Thompson can tell us more about who will be on that panel thanks uh for the question so the review is going to be guided by an expert panel from Academia the water industry water utilities management and engineering and government entities focused on infrastructure and resilience our team has already been in meetings with a number of these industry associations and other municipalities to start to figure out uh who will form the panel and we’ll be bringing out more information shortly and for the mayor again uh what overlay is there between the previously mentioned uh drug water restrictions and limitation requests uh and the current infrastructure water limitations in for bus so we have had water restrictions in place in the past when we have seen drought conditions uh we have water restrictions in place now for a different reason the water restrictions we have in place right now are based completely on the fact that we can’t be using poble water for outdoor uses we can’t be washing cars in the driveway or watering the lawn at a time when we really need to preserve our treated water supply I’ll take a couple more questions Mr di CDC or chief Henry just with regard to the state of local emergency is that a one we EXP exension that is correct the state of local emergency is a onewe extension 7 days and short of drinking water going through that feeder M everything’s all better is there any other reason that you might lift the state of local emergency sooner we’re really keeping the state of local emergency in place to be nimble and to be fast it’s very complicated work of this magnitude when there’s different sites to be working with and we want to be positioned that we can move quickly and act very responsibly if something happens in that repair that we need to to do so the the real marker would be water back to Citizens um and our service restored to lift that state of local emergency last question problem is and what private property is being utilized for the construction repairs and where is it exactly why is it being thanks for that uh question so we’ve had to access a number of private properties to keep access to those properties for lay down uh equipment uh as Chief Henry said it’s a very complex construction site things are changing consistently I mentioned yesterday instead of replacing one of the pipes and cutting it out we’re actually going to be uh um keeping it in place and structurally reinforcing around it and so we are dealing with a number of things that change on a day-to-day basis and so the ability to be agile uh to get this repair done quickly as to support restoring the water service is our our number one objective and specifically where uh I’d have to follow up with those details for you we’ll turn it over to the mayor thanks again everyone for everything you’re doing to keep your water usage low it is really making a big difference if we remain below the threshold that means that we’ve got a safe supply of water available for firefighting or any emergency purposes that might be needed in hospitals or care facilities I know you’ve all been doing your part we’ve been at this for 16 days I know sometimes it feels tiring I get it but it’s just a little while longer we will move as quickly as we can towards getting water turned back on and that July 5th timeline feels pretty real right now so it’s just a little while longer of all of us banding together and I can’t thank you enough for being so committed to doing this thank you

City of Calgary officials are seeing a concerning trend in water usage over the previous two days as the city continues to deal with a shortage, following a water main break that led to the discovery of more damaged pipelines.

“It’s expected to be a hot weekend. So, let’s make sure that we’re trying to conserve water as much as possible,” Mayor Jyoti Gondek said.

“With hot weather coming this weekend, we need to keep our water usage down. And that means finding smart ways to stay cool. If you’re a popsicle person, make sure you have stocked up your freezer. Or maybe this weekend is a good time to catch a show or head to a gallery,” Gondek added.
In the meantime, health officials are warning citizens about the use of non-potable water.

“I want to stress that this water is not intended for consumption. We should not be using it to drink, for brushing our teeth, for anything entering the body,” Alberta Health Services Medical Officer of Health Dr. Franco Rizzuti emphasized.

“Don’t be using non-potable water for any outdoor activity. So, if you have a little kiddie pool that you’re collecting rainwater in, children should not be playing in it,” Rizzuti added.

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