Major Water Main Break in Bowness Area

[Leeman4Gilmour]

Originally Posted by Boblobla

Is at steel pipe that is concrete lined and jacketed? No wonder it is taking time to repair...

I suspect concrete with an HDPE liner. Precon out of Lethbridge is making a #### tonne of that pipe for the city of Calgary as we speak. Not because of this, although I'm sure some of that will be used for this now.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

Damn you, Sliver. You called my bluff.

On a serious note is there any evidence that this break was the result of negligence or deferred maintenance? I see people bitching at the city but I don't know if it's warranted.

IMO the only negligence is that construction (or even planning) for a replacement line does not seem to have been underway AFAIK. A critical piece of infrastructure was nearing end of lifespan, and the plan appears to have been crossed-fingers.

But at least we found money for a new place for the Flames to skate (if they can get enough water to the ice plant, of course). Priorities!


Now I'm sure it's not nearly this simple, but a fairly quick mitigation might be to twin the pipe running due east from Bearspaw, so it could fill both branches fully. Certainly not a long-term solution, but perhaps that would double our countdown timer to empty.

Spoiler!

It looks like there might be another missing link (likely just smaller pipes right now) along Crowchild from Northland Dr to 24th.


I don't know what's involved with building a treated reservoir, but there may have been a missed opportunity with the WRR to build a big-ass pipe up to a new reservoir on the hill. Which would need more pipes to tie in to Bow/Sarcee, but even just having more storage for local use would free up capacity from Glenmore to the lines served by the currently ####ed big feeder.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

It will be interesting what happens, particularity when the city says the main break is fixed. Presumably everyone will respond by using a record amount of water. Which could be bad.

At least it'll keep the line pressures down for a bit!

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

IMO the only negligence is that construction (or even planning) for a replacement line does not seem to have been underway AFAIK. A critical piece of infrastructure was nearing end of lifespan, and the plan appears to have been crossed-fingers.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I heard that this pipe was only ~50 years into a planned 100 year lifespan.

[darockwilder]

Yeah, it's hard to believe that a city that has basically doubled in size since I moved here in the early 90s is having a infrastructure problem.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I heard that this pipe was only ~50 years into a planned 100 year lifespan.

Correct.

And as much as people complain 'we should have replaced/twinned the line/built more redundancies', you just know that those exact same people would be complaining about 'silly hall' wasting money if we spent hundreds of millions (more?) to replace it or twin it.

We literally don't know anything yet. We don't know why this failed. They did maintenance earlier in the year on this line - did that have an impact? We don't know yet. We don't know if it was because of a lack of maintenance, planning, investment, etc. Let's just hold off on the blame game for a minute, get it fixed and then we can start to look back and figure out where it went wrong.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I heard that this pipe was only ~50 years into a planned 100 year lifespan.

I'd heard repeatedly that it was a 50 year lifespan...but that's probably just garbage info being repeated

[PsYcNeT]

Yep

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I heard that this pipe was only ~50 years into a planned 100 year lifespan.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/local...tion-necessary

The expected lifespan for a feeder main is 100 years — Gondek said it was at the 50-year mark.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

I'd heard repeatedly that it was a 50 year lifespan...but that's probably just garbage info being repeated

I think some engineer said at the very beginning of all this that when originally installed 50 years ago they would have expected a 50+ year lifespan which got misconstrued to '50 years and then it's garbage'.

But City/Gondek have since said 100 year lifespan.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I heard that this pipe was only ~50 years into a planned 100 year lifespan.

I hope they do a proper RCA on the pipe. I am no expert but have some experience working with maintenance including pipeline. For it to fail at this mark you have to wonder how hard the asset was being run. Like others said, like a car riding it hard will shorten life. High pressure will do that.

[fotze2]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Every time I see one your replies to me, I feel like you meant to respond to the person I was replying to.

It could be. Haha, yours just the one I clicked.

[Torture]

Found where I first saw the '50 years' comment:

The most common age of failure for water mains made with precast concrete, especially those under high pressure, is around 50 years — the age Calgary’s broken main was just about to reach, said Tricia Stadnyk, professor and Canada Research Chair in hydrologic modelling with the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering. Stadnyk also said the week-minimum repair time for the main is a highly likely outcome.

The city did routine maintenance work on the feeder main earlier this spring, said Nancy Mackay, Calgary’s director of water services. The city still hasn’t determined what caused the break.

“We actually had done some work on this one — because it’s such a critical one, that’s part of our due diligence is making sure that we’ve got good backup plans for when something goes wrong,” Mackay said Thursday.

Stadnyk said she has little doubt the pipe had been flagged by city engineers and that requests for funding and upgrades had been made. “What city council wants to pay for that and go through the hassle with the citizens and be responsible for that when it’s out of sight, out of mind?” she said.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/calga...ne-week-repair

[fotze2]

I don’t think twinning a pipe like that’s an easy fix. You’d need to acquire ROW like a mother. Something that big in the bald ass prairie would be a big project.middle of inner city Calgary, I’m not envious of having to deal with that. Maybe running to failure is cheaper than proactively twinning or looping or whatever. It’s possible, just curious.

I choose to run to failure all the time. Like my POS oldass car.

I’m not blame gaming just insanely curious, I had a 20” fail last year due to slope instability. 50 years is a long life. Not every parson on earth is equally partisan. It’s a risk game, no one wants Cadillac infrastructure and the costs.

This isn’t gondeks fault, like she’s making these decisions. That would be ridiculous. It will be on the radar now.

Also, this size, equipment or valves or splices or whatever aren’t sitting in a shelf. A simple bonnet on a wellhead takes me months to source. 7 days would be impressive.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Have we vetted all the pipeline workers to ensure that they are not foreign agents or worse, Oilers fans?

They might put something in the water.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by fotze2

I don’t think twinning a pipe like that’s an easy fix. You’d need to acquire ROW like a mother. Something that big in the bald ass prairie would be a big project.middle of inner city Calgary, I’m not envious of having to deal with that. Maybe running to failure is cheaper than proactively twinning or looping or whatever. It’s possible, just curious.

I choose to run to failure all the time. Like my POS oldass car.

I’m not blame gaming just insanely curious, I had a 20” fail last year due to slope instability. 50 years is a long life. Not every parson on earth is equally partisan. It’s a risk game, no one wants Cadillac infrastructure and the costs.

This isn’t gondeks fault, like she’s making these decisions. That would be ridiculous. It will be on the radar now.

Also, this size, equipment or valves or splices or whatever aren’t sitting in a shelf. A simple bonnet on a wellhead takes me months to source. 7 days would be impressive.

Right? Everyone complains about the construction downtown to move utilities for the green line, this would be a similar level of disruption.
Thankfully the City learned from the McKnight rupture and had replacement pipe ready to go which will save us weeks.

[PaperBagger'14]

Originally Posted by Torture

Right? Everyone complains about the construction downtown to move utilities for the green line, this would be a similar level of disruption.
Thankfully the City learned from the McKnight rupture and had replacement pipe ready to go which will save us weeks.

I’m sure those field level guys downtown hear all the time about how awful the construction is.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by fotze2

I don’t think twinning a pipe like that’s an easy fix. You’d need to acquire ROW like a mother. Something that big in the bald ass prairie would be a big project.middle of inner city Calgary, I’m not envious of having to deal with that. Maybe running to failure is cheaper than proactively twinning or looping or whatever. It’s possible, just curious.

I choose to run to failure all the time. Like my POS oldass car.

I’m not blame gaming just insanely curious, I had a 20” fail last year due to slope instability. 50 years is a long life. Not every parson on earth is equally partisan. It’s a risk game, no one wants Cadillac infrastructure and the costs.

This isn’t gondeks fault, like she’s making these decisions. That would be ridiculous. It will be on the radar now.

Also, this size, equipment or valves or splices or whatever aren’t sitting in a shelf. A simple bonnet on a wellhead takes me months to source. 7 days would be impressive.

This is why I wonder if WRR to Bow Tr could be an option. ROW should be pretty easy and you only cross the river/tracks once (whereas this line crosses at least twice). About 9km to Sarcee/Bow so it's not really any longer.

I assume the flow from Edworthy generally goes uphill, whereas my idea would reverse it. But I'm just an idiot who likes connecting lines on maps.

[Brendone]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Stop smiling for the camera and get back to work!

Union likely has a designated photo op member. That’s his only job, so he needs to step up and shine.

[Raekwon]

This would have never happened if the water was Fluorinated

[Reggie Dunlop]

The person to blame would be Rod Sykes. He was the Mayor at the time.

He's still alive at 92.