Winter water main breaks wreaking havoc
The winter of 2013-14 has brought a slightly bloated number of water main breaks to Saskatoon, with all the resulting inconvenience, frustration and expense. Homeowner: Toni Taylor has been carefully picking her way through her bumpy, icy yard since a broken pipe flooded her Minto Place culde-sac on Jan. 10. While her home insurer is covering the cost of the inundated basement cleanup and repairs, it won’t pay for clearing the yard ice that was too thick to chip away. Melting the ice with salt is a sluggish process that has convinced her the city should send workers over to remove it.
“I don’t think it’s fair ... There’s ice from the front right to the back, everywhere I have to walk. The ice is jaggedy, it’s got footprints in it, dips in it, lumps and sharp parts and now it’s covered in snow ... It’s nerve wracking and annoying.” City Solicitor: Patricia Warwick says any damage on private property should be referred to the owner’s insurance company. The city relies on Saskatchewan’s Cities Act, which protects it from nuisance claims. Property owners can make a claim to the city anyway, but it’s the city that investigates to determine if it has been negligent. Having city workers clean up the yard remains in the realm of a claim, she said. City councillor: Darren Hill says if the mess is a result of infrastructure failure on public property, the city should step up.
“If we are responsible, we should be cleaning it up and not giving the runaround, especially if there are safety issues and concerns about ice and slip and falls,” he said. Public Works: Even modern plastic or steel infrastructure can crack in cold, wet and dry climate extremes that cause heavy soil to shift. Shrunk and dried-out or swollen and rainsaturated summer soil causes breaks just as often as frost-heaved winter earth.
Winter breaks are harder to cope with because of frozen catch basins and because streets that flood then freeze, making driving hazardous.
Repairing the water main starts with a shut-off. Underground utilities, such as gas, electrical and telephone lines, must be located and marked before any digging can begin. Trained crews use an electronic leak location device to find the break — a critical step that can avoid a wrong-spot dig through the frozen earth.
Service is usually restored within 48 hours. The city has four water trailers that are brought to break sites, usually within eight hours of the disruption.