Major Water Main Break in Bowness Area

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Torture

Yeah. Confusing. What exactly is the target?



'We simply must do better', but at the same time we're using water at the 'sustainable threshold or beyond'

Seems the concern is that if the increase continues to trend we're in trouble and we're essentially right at the line and trending the wrong way, but maybe just say we need to double down and bend the curve () then?

The target number has been around 500million litres a day this whole time. That hasn’t really changed.

So if when we hit 420, the mayor says feel free to increase water use 20% the target is 500 we’d use 600 the next day. If you continue to use highly alarmist language you burn people out. It’s a prisoners dilemma type situation as soon as you say that.

So I don’t mind today’s message. We are currently at the sustainable target, you need to do better is the correct message because of the natural slippage that occurs.
I also didn’t mind last weeks more positive message of we are hitting targets keep it up when we were in the 440s.

I think regardless of messaging we’d be here critiquing messaging.

[Ped]

Throwing out numbers is not really helpful imo unless you're demand exceeds supply. If I had to conserve water, I wouldn't be spending all sorts of time doing the math, and then saying "Oh, I can fill my pool today because I'm under." I would just keep trying to conserve water until they say not to.

[Julio]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Maybe just having a water quota would be better. Do what you want. Use your share for drinking/showering/lawn watering/whatever.

Then I could sell some of my 'quota', which I wouldn't come close to using as a townhouse owning non latte sipper, to friends out in the burbs? Sign me up!

[timun]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I looked at that pipeline map and thought 2 things.

1) would be good to connect the NW to the NE north of Nose Hill Park somewhere

2) as someone who lives in the isolated NW areas of the system there is actually no need for me to be conserving water. I get why they don't say that in the briefings, but still interesting to see the system layout.

As an aside, with respect to 2): y'all remember how ol' timun here got chastised for being an armchair quarterback on the first page of this thread, for writing this?

Originally Posted by timun

Pretty sure the south side of the city, fed from the Glenmore Reservoir, would be entirely unaffected by this break, but anyway...

[timun]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

New Sod will dry up and die really quickly if not watered.


It is the worst timing

Yyyyep. A new rowhouse infill near me just laid sod down the day before or day of the break. It's all dead now, looked brown and crispy when I drove past a couple days ago. Poor ####ers probably lost a couple grand's worth of grass.

[Knut]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

Here’s one for the class; so a person in my community apparently had literally just installed a brand new lawn the day before the water main break. So in order to save the lawn and not have to pay for another they kinda had to water it (I assume this is true? Is this true?).

They received QUITE the blowback obviously including visits from police etc, is it reasonable though for these people in this specific circumstance to water a lawn? There’s been a hell of a debate amongst people I know on this one and I find the discussions interesting / amusing.

Around the corner from me there is a house with new sod. I noticed them watering it at midnight. I did not call it in. I really felt for them. It was definitely fresh

[Raekwon]

They should have bought the rain barrel my sister in-law has, it magically keeps filling and the water is super clear.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Raekwon

They should have bought the rain barrel my sister in-law has, it magically keeps filling and the water is super clear.

Sounds expensive.

[Bigtime]

They've moved the usual afternoon briefing from 2pm to 5pm.

Uh oh?

[Fuzz]

Ah, the ol announce bad news at the end of the day Friday trick.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

They received QUITE the blowback obviously including visits from police etc, is it reasonable though for these people in this specific circumstance to water a lawn? There’s been a hell of a debate amongst people I know on this one and I find the discussions interesting / amusing.

I’d wager the people who came down against wouldn’t just shrug off $2k in landscaping lost if it were them. But it’s easy to take the high road when you don’t have skin in the game.

Our neighbours had their entire back yard re-sodded last week. I expect they’re watering it at night, and I’m not going to hold it against them. They gave us a few chunks of sod to patch our front lawn, and we’re watering them with grey water. But that’s not practical for a whole lawn.

I’m okay with drawing a distinction between imposing inconvenience on people in the name of civic duty, and imposing multi-thousand dollar losses. The city seems to understand the distinction as well, since they’re not imposing restrictions on businesses that require water to function.

[Fuzz]

The real problem isn't that they water the new sod, it's that others see that, say screw it and water their own lawn because why should it die too? My back yard is starting to look like Arrakis, so I imagine others are starting to see the same thing.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The real problem isn't that they water the new sod, it's that others see that, say screw it and water their own lawn because why should it die too? My back yard is starting to look like Arrakis, so I imagine others are starting to see the same thing.

It’s their back yard, and it’s private. Nobody will see it.

[fotze2]

It’s not the quantity of water but the delivery rate. So you’d think late night wouldn’t be as big a problem?

[Slava]

I can't say I wouldn't water overnight if I had just put new sod down. I don't think it's unreasonable either.

That said, I don't find this water restriction or reduction all that bad. Truthfully, it's opened my eyes to some habits I have that are pretty wasteful that I can probably curtail going forward. I try to be cognizant of water use in general because I think that this is actually the biggest issue we face over the longer-term, but there "were" times I would just let some water run that I've noticed over the past week and it's a pretty minor adjustment for me to just not do that going forward.

I've continually pushed off the xeriscaping to "next year". I think more people should do that though. It depends on your property, but grass in the front yard (in particular) is just so pointless. It's basically only aesthetic, and I just don't see a lot of point.

[fotze2]

I think they should just jack up the water cost ten (or more) times for this month. It’s pretty darn cheap as is. You can use it but it’s gonna cost you.

[timun]

Implementing any further "outdoor restrictions", or any sort of "indoor restriction", is essentially impossible without physically shutting people's water off. And that ain't gonna happen.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by fotze2

It’s not the quantity of water but the delivery rate. So you’d think late night wouldn’t be as big a problem?

Less so, but I'd imagine that at night they're still using as much of the spare capacity as possible to refill reservoirs.

[moncton golden flames]

Originally Posted by Slava

I can't say I wouldn't water overnight if I had just put new sod down. I don't think it's unreasonable either.

That said, I don't find this water restriction or reduction all that bad. Truthfully, it's opened my eyes to some habits I have that are pretty wasteful that I can probably curtail going forward. I try to be cognizant of water use in general because I think that this is actually the biggest issue we face over the longer-term, but there "were" times I would just let some water run that I've noticed over the past week and it's a pretty minor adjustment for me to just not do that going forward.

I've continually pushed off the xeriscaping to "next year". I think more people should do that though. It depends on your property, but grass in the front yard (in particular) is just so pointless. It's basically only aesthetic, and I just don't see a lot of point.

Maybe I am looking at it the wrong way, but Xeriscaping does not seem like a good response.

With a xeriscape, there is virtually zero water retention capability and the soil just continues to dry out and shed water faster. Soil is the best storage place for water and xeriscaping seems counterproductive.

[fotze2]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Less so, but I'd imagine that at night they're still using as much of the spare capacity as possible to refill reservoirs.

Sounds reasonable. I don’t understand the system enough at all.