Increasing pipe freeze-ups predicted

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This article was published 07/03/2014 (4239 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Another day, another 45 Winnipeg properties without water. And it’s only going to get worse.

Glum-faced city officials said Thursday the total number of properties without water because of frozen water lines now stands at 722.

“The list will continue to grow because the frost is continuing to deepen as long as there are sub-zero temperatures,” said Diane Sacher, director of water and waste.

Sacher said she expects the number of affected properties to climb daily — probably 70 new properties every day until the frost is out of the ground, outpacing the 15 a day at which the city is able restore service.

She blamed the daily increase in affected properties on weather conditions — the frost is reaching deeper into the ground and freezing more pipes.

“The circumstances that Mother Nature has dealt us this year are just so extraordinary that we couldn’t have been prepared for this,” she said.

Mayor Sam Katz would not speculate on the possibility of council agreeing to pay for moving some affected families into hotels.

Katz said he expects the accommodation issue to be discussed among politicians soon, but added no councillor has contacted him to pursue that option.

Coun. Paula Havixbeck (Charleswood-Tuxedo) later formally requested Katz to hold a special council meeting to deal with the accommodation issue.

Havixbeck said she estimates the cost for hotel accommodations would be about $1 million, but added the city should easily find that amount in a $1.7-billion budget.

Katz and Sacher said other cold-weather municipalities in Canada and the U.S. have been contacted, but they can’t spare equipment to thaw pipes.

“When you go from Saskatchewan to Quebec or parts of the United States, if anybody has any type of equipment that can do this, they are already using it and they all need more,” Katz said.

Sacher said the city has decided to warn an additional 595 property owners whose neighbours are without water that they are at risk, too, and advise them to run a tap 24 hours a day.

Those properties will have their water bills adjusted.

The city had previously warned about 1,000 property owners who had water-line freezes in the past to do the same.

“We’re looking at any other factors to find out if there is any other correlation that might help us predict” additional pipeline freezes, Sacher said.

“We’re looking at pavement locations, proximity to other structures that might increase the frost penetration (of the ground), age of homes.”

While some American cities are advising all their residents to let a tap run 24 hours a day, Sacher said the city will not go that route.

She said preliminary analysis indicates Winnipeg’s water and sewer system would be overwhelmed if everyone left a tap running, adding that could lead to widespread basement flooding.

“There’s no point in wasting that water and compromising safety risks on our sewer system.”

Those American cities will be contacted to learn how the practice is affecting their systems, she said.

The city has had little success working with private contractors who’ve claimed they have equipment that can thaw frozen lines.

While the private contractors’ equipment was able to thaw smaller lines on private property, Sacher said the contractors were unable to thaw the larger, frozen city lines beneath the streets.

“The vast majority of frozen services are occurring on the city side of the (property) line that is under the pavement,” Sacher said.

“The plumbing contractors have great success in thawing frozen pipes that are between the (water) meter and the property line… but when they try to thaw on the city side, from the property line to our water main under the pavement, they have not been successful.”

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca