Calgary water main break section repaired, but 5 hot spots remain

Over the weekend, the portion of the water feeder main that ruptured in Calgary was fully repaired. Now, the city’s focus is on repairing the five hot spots that were identified after robots were sent through the pipe to inspect it.

A catastrophic water feeder main break cut Calgary off from 60 per cent of its treated water supply on June 5 and a a state of local emergency was declared on Saturday morning, with city officials urging residents to use less water. 

Mayor Jyoti Gondek said in her Monday morning update on the city’s ongoing water disruptions that repairs on those five hot spots have commenced and will all be worked on at the same time.

• City officials are set to provide an update on the ongoing water situation at 2 p.m. on Monday. Watch it live here or on the CBC Alberta YouTube channel.

While the three- to five-week timeframe for repairs remains, Gondek says that the heavy duty equipment needed for the repairs would be arriving Monday.

“We knew we had to take a bold approach to get this pipe fixed,” she said.

This weekend, two roundtables were held with energy sector experts and the city’s operations team. Two more of these roundtable sessions will be held, says the mayor.

“Collaborating with experts behind the scenes has been incredibly beneficial to us.”

The mayor also says the city has now engaged with six private companies: Standard General, Volker Stevin, Whissell Contracting, LBCO Contracting, Associated Engineering and Pure Technologies. 

New low for weekend water consumption

Gondek says the city has been in touch with over 700 commercial users to ask them to lower their water consumption.

However, the focus still remains on individual water users, as Gondek says residents make up roughly two-thirds of the city’s water use.

She says one fewer toilet flush per household could save the city roughly 12.5 million litres of water.

But on Monday, she thanked Calgarians and residents of surrounding communities such as Tsuut’ina Nation, Strathmore, Airdrie and Chestermere for limiting their water use.

According to the mayor, consumption over the weekend lowered. 

Just 438 million litres were consumed on Saturday, and 439 million litres on Sunday. Gondek says the threshold for consumption that the city must remain below is 480 million litres.

She says usage exceeded that threshold earlier last week on Wednesday.

In an interview with the Calgary Eyeopener before her morning briefing, Gondek told CBC Radio host Loren McGinnis that there would be an update regarding the Calgary Stampede — which runs July 5 to 14 — during Monday afternoon’s regular 2 p.m. press conference. 

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