Montreal hit by water main break similar to Calgary’s. Who’s next?

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When it comes to Catastrophic failure of critical water infrastructureThen, suddenly, Calgary had visitors.

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Montreal residents were treated to a visual spectacle Friday when Large water main burst east of downtownforming a fountain as high as two stories.

Some details of the incident will be familiar to Calgarians.

The pipe had been installed for less than 40 years when it burst without warning, meaning it had lived less than half its expected lifespan.

While it is too early to determine the cause and process of the rupture, officials speculate that the affected pipes may have suffered corrosion due to the infiltration of winter road salt.

Repairs are expected to take weeks due to a lack of parts and equipment needed to resolve the issue.

The massive pipe, more than two metres wide, is the main conduit for delivering treated water to homes and businesses east of Montreal.

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A boil water advisory was briefly in effect for those parts of the city as a precaution.

This is where the two stories diverge dramatically.

Redundancy in water supply networks leads to insufficient rationing

While it’s expected to take a month to repair the broken water main and the crushed sections of road and sidewalk above it, Montrealers are not being asked to conserve water until the necessary repairs are complete.

Montreal water officials told local media the cause was a parallel feeder line that connects the water treatment plant to the various reservoirs that serve the affected areas.

As we all know by now, this is something Calgary doesn’t have — at least not yet.

Unfortunately, the Bearspaw South branch mainline ruptured before the backup pipeline could be built.

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Additional feeder trunk lines extending from the Bearspaw treatment plant in the northwest are being planned and designed, a city official said in an Aug. 9 briefing. Calgary was hit by flooding on June 5The massive pipeline, which carries 60 percent of the city’s drinking water, was crippled.

Michael Thompson, Calgary’s general manager of infrastructure, said the construction schedule for these new water mains is ahead of schedule.

It is shocking that yet another Canadian city, like Calgary, was unaware that such a vital feeder trunk line had been damaged and catastrophically failed.

How many timed water bombs are still hidden beneath the streets of this country?

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Broken water pipes bring disaster to the entire continent

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek and others are using the city’s water emergency as a way to Calls for more funding to update aging infrastructureneither the Bearspaw South feeder main (installed in 1975) nor the water main that exploded in Montreal last week (installed in 1985) are old enough to need replacement.

Based on news reports of previous catastrophic water main breaks in North America, the pipe used in the Bearspaw South water main (called prestressed concrete cylindrical pipe, or PCCP) appears to be susceptible to premature aging and sudden failure, including An incident in Southern California In 1999, there were four incidents in Florida since 1979; Nine incidents in Maryland Since 1996.

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Meanwhile, a paper presented at the National Research Council’s annual Western Canada Water Conference in Regina in September 2008 highlighted The Importance of Vigilance for Water System Operators.

“PCCP pipeline failures are often catastrophic because they occur without leaks, which can be detected visually on the surface to provide an alert and enable rapid intervention to repair the pipeline, thus preventing the failure,” wrote NRC researcher Riad Al Wardany.

“PCCP failures are always associated with a lack of maintenance operations because the condition of the pipeline is underestimated, and thus the priority of its repair.”

Yes, higher levels of government need to invest more in urban infrastructure, but local governments also need better systems for measuring the health of critical water pipes so they can be repaired before they fail and let down the people they are supposed to serve.

rleong@postmedia.com

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