If I had a dollar for every oilfield coworker I've heard rant against anything "environmental", usually they say we just need to use common sense and anyone who tries to adjust their behavior to lessen their impact is a lunatic.
If I had a dollar for every oilfield coworker I've heard rant against anything "environmental", usually they say we just need to use common sense and anyone who tries to adjust their behavior to lessen their impact is a lunatic.
I feel so bad now. You are totally right. Man you are smarter than I thought. Never thought of it that way.
My wife is a misplaced psycho about "the environment". The kitchen sink goes 5 hours a night . She washes our garbage and recycling. That sink is constantly going.
My MIL is like this, often. She pre-rinses most things before they go in the dishwasher. She washes all the food based recycling. And it's not like turn water on, rinse the thing, shut it off. It's turn the water on, rinse the thing, put it on the counter, pick up next thing, repeat a couple dozen times, then shut water off. Sometimes have a conversation while doing this, with the water running in the background.
Grinds my gears, even when its at her own house. When she's at ours, she's not allowed on dish duty. She can clear, pack up food, whatver. But no dish duty.
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My honest suspicion is that it isn't as dire as last time, which is why they haven't activated the emergency alert (and don't want to unless it's actually needed).
The city isn't burning through reserves as fast this time (nobody watering lawns this time of year), and they got the pipes shut fast enough that a much smaller area of the city had pressure drops sufficient to need a boil water advisory. While we are in an unsustainable trend, reserves are likely enough that we can handle a bit of red zone until the pipe is back working again.
I think its exactly this. Full disclosure: I am just an idiot on the internet and am still saving water because I'm sure there's a bunch of caveats that I'm not considering.
A few interesting things from poking around this map:
There are 3 pipes coming out of Bearspaw: BPSFM 1.95M diameter and two 1.35M pipes. Which works out to about 52/24/24% based on circle area.
So we can theoretically get about 264 ML out of Bearspaw by the two other pipes. However, I doubt the areas served by those two pipes demand that full amount, and there are limited opportunities to move excess water beyond those areas to the rest of the system - I think there is one 0.6M diameter pipe connected to a reservoir in north Charleswood/Collingwood, which works out to about 25-35ML per day.
And then a 0.9M pipe from Crestmont up to Big Hill West reservoir in Broadcast Hill (looks like this may have been facilitated by a project in 2019), which could be another 60-80ML per day.
So if Bearspaw can still serve a big chunk of the NW and help get another 80-100ML into the rest of the system, things don't look too bad when you add another 400ML out of Glenmore. HOWEVER, Glenmore has less capacity to the north, so distributing to the N, NE, and Airdrie still looks very challenging. There are a number of smaller pipes, but BPSFM being down probably takes out the biggest 1.2M diameter pipe that runs from the south end of Shaganappi Trail up towards the NE past Foothills hospital. It might be possible to get some water into that pipe from Broadcast Hill, but I doubt there is that much if any excess to be had since I think Broadcast Hill is normally served from the same pumping station.
If push really came to shove we might be able to cut off just Airdrie, but I'm not sure if there would be a way to even get them non-potable water? I'm not sure how the non-potable scenario works in any event...I wonder if they could draw from the Bow into the Shag pump station through that 1.2M pipe I mentioned above...I think everyone north of Beddington would then have to boil.
TLDR: it's still really important that everyone everywhere saves water, but it's probably not so dire that we need to publicly execute carwash owners and users...at least not yet.
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Calgary has grown a lot over the past 20-something years. Anyone who has ever played SimCity knows that you need to add another water plant eventually.
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I think its exactly this. Full disclosure: I am just an idiot on the internet and am still saving water because I'm sure there's a bunch of caveats that I'm not considering.
A few interesting things from poking around this map:
There are 3 pipes coming out of Bearspaw: BPSFM 1.95M diameter and two 1.35M pipes. Which works out to about 52/24/24% based on circle area.
So we can theoretically get about 264 ML out of Bearspaw by the two other pipes. However, I doubt the areas served by those two pipes demand that full amount, and there are limited opportunities to move excess water beyond those areas to the rest of the system - I think there is one 0.6M diameter pipe connected to a reservoir in north Charleswood/Collingwood, which works out to about 25-35ML per day.
And then a 0.9M pipe from Crestmont up to Big Hill West reservoir in Broadcast Hill (looks like this may have been facilitated by a project in 2019), which could be another 60-80ML per day.
So if Bearspaw can still serve a big chunk of the NW and help get another 80-100ML into the rest of the system, things don't look too bad when you add another 400ML out of Glenmore. HOWEVER, Glenmore has less capacity to the north, so distributing to the N, NE, and Airdrie still looks very challenging. There are a number of smaller pipes, but BPSFM being down probably takes out the biggest 1.2M diameter pipe that runs from the south end of Shaganappi Trail up towards the NE past Foothills hospital. It might be possible to get some water into that pipe from Broadcast Hill, but I doubt there is that much if any excess to be had since I think Broadcast Hill is normally served from the same pumping station.
Farkas has responded to several folks on Reddit that the NW has to conserve as well. Everything is interconnected and water that is conserved in the NW eventually flows to the South, just not directly w/o the feeder main. The NW isn't an island.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Farkas
No, restrictions apply everywhere. You may be close to the plant but we need as much water as possible to go "through" your neighbourhood to areas further from the plant.
Calgary’s drinking water system is fully interconnected. Our pipes, treatment plants, and underground storage all work together to supply water across the city. While some neighbourhoods are served by specific feeder mains and pressure zones, this does not mean that only certain areas need to reduce water use.
While repairs are underway on the Bearspaw South Feeder Main, Calgary is relying on the smaller Glenmore Water Treatment Plant to supply water to the entire city and surrounding communities. This means significantly less water is available overall.
To maintain the health of our entire distribution system, we need everyone to reduce their use. This ensures our treatment plants can produce enough safe drinking water, our underground storage can be refilled overnight, and water can be moved effectively through the network to everyone who needs it.
So, what does the City do going forward? Fixing this length of pipe has to be priority one now, doesn't it? Does anyone know what that would invovolve? Would there be any way to lay a 'temporary' pipe above ground or something? Or is it just dig it up and put in a new one? Billions?
So, what does the City do going forward? Fixing this length of pipe has to be priority one now, doesn't it? Does anyone know what that would invovolve? Would there be any way to lay a 'temporary' pipe above ground or something? Or is it just dig it up and put in a new one? Billions?
It's been discussed, but you can read about it here.
TLDR; starting in spring, two year project, old line remains in place and functioning(hopefully) until the new one is running. New one will be 30m depth using TBM's, so won't impact current pipe.
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TLDR, we're probably okay in the near term but if it breaks again before spring melt refills the reservoir (which is a real risk especially as they re-pressurize, the City highlighted that this is something they are worried about really clearly in their update the other day) our remaining water is only what is left in the reservoir. If it breaks again and we continue usage at the same rate Aryn suggests it's appropriate to measure the remaining water in weeks.
Obviously 1% a day isn't sustainable, but we need to know what it typically looks like.
We had 2.8mm precip between Jan 2 and 3; I was going to accuse her of cherry picking but it looks like rivers.ab mostly gives data just for the last week. But I did find a 1 year graph - it looks like we dropped at a similar rate for most of February last year, and we may have gotten through:
some more flexible past data (but not up to current) here . It looks like the past two years levels started to drop in November and December
It looks like warm weather tends to help replenishment a fair bit, so this week's big melt should help.
Just today (jan 9) we dropped below 1076.25 meters. Going backwards, here's the date we've crossed that same threshold:
Jan 5
Jan 16
Dec 17
Dec 12
And from October 2016 to July 2020 the reservoir was always a fair bit lower; 2018 and 2019 seem to have used 1075.0 meters as a maximum baseline.
I don't think there's a ton to be worried about here. The earliest we bottomed out in the spring was April 1 2018 at 1072.6M. If we dropped ~25cms every ~7 days like we just did then we'd hit 1073.0M around April 1.
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It's probably not dire. As long as the pipe doesn't break again before spring. I suspect that's a big concern, given re-pressurizing and the multiple failure points last time.
So the concern is how likely is it the pipe will break again, and how much reservoir water is left. We should also keep in mind population and usage has increased ever year, so past volumes are less relevant today the further back you look.
We could avoid the concern if we maximize global warming over the next two months.
It's probably not dire. As long as the pipe doesn't break again before spring. I suspect that's a big concern, given re-pressurizing and the multiple failure points last time.
So the concern is how likely is it the pipe will break again, and how much reservoir water is left. We should also keep in mind population and usage has increased ever year, so past volumes are less relevant today the further back you look.
We could avoid the concern if we maximize global warming over the next two months.
Exactly. If it's fixed and holds we're fine.
If it breaks again it's time to start worrying.
Looking back further it looks like the winter base line was usually a little over 1075.0 (ie. we were intentionally releasing water in October to get down to that level). The last 5 years or so it looks like they try to hold it around 1076.7 for as long as possible.
It looks like they opened some new gates on the dam in 2020, so the extra low years in 2018 and 19 may have been related to that. If BPSFM broke in those years we might have been in a lot more trouble (also not sure if Glenmore was operating at full current capacity then?) Perhaps the new gates also facilitate keeping levels higher into winter?
The water dept. deserves plenty of scrutiny right now, but it's important to remember that they have still been doing lots of work to bolster system resiliency. If they tried to do a major inspection 5 or 10 years ago and the pipe burst under repressurization then we might have been in much bigger trouble. I'm totally speculating here, but I think this may have played into decisions to delay those big inspections.
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Farkas has responded to several folks on Reddit that the NW has to conserve as well. Everything is interconnected and water that is conserved in the NW eventually flows to the South, just not directly w/o the feeder main. The NW isn't an island.
Yes NW absolutely needs to conserve to make sure those few connections to the system are flowing 100% 24/7. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise as I have no idea what margin is need to achieve that. But the city is being over-simplistic when they say Glenmore is doing everything right now, and that's fine because we're all dumb.
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Yes NW absolutely needs to conserve to make sure those few connections to the system are flowing 100% 24/7. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise as I have no idea what margin is need to achieve that. But the city is being over-simplistic when they say Glenmore is doing everything right now, and that's fine because we're all dumb.
Both times when the break happened I think thew city said Bearspaw wasn't providing any water. In 2024, they brought it back to service those smaller lines. I haven't heard they are doing that this time, and according to Farkas(from above)
Calgary is relying on the smaller Glenmore Water Treatment Plant to supply water to the entire city and surrounding communities.
that may still be the case? I went looking a few days ago to see if it was active, but couldn't find anything. You are right the communication is confusing(given they should be able to use those other lines like last time?), but it has been consistent in what I have found. It's all coming from Glenmore.
We could avoid the concern if we maximize global warming over the next two months.
Well I took my office space heater and placed it outside and cranked it up to maximum. So I'm doing my part!!
I also plugged it into my neighbour's outlet to avoid the impending massive power bill. That'll teach him for having an unprotected exterior power outlet!
He's not going to be happy about that but he's also very elderly and I think I could take him if the need should arise.
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There's been claims across the socials that Farkas and Farrell were raising questions about water infrastructure back in 2019. Which is technically kinda true, except it was only for some tiny residential service lines that might contain lead: https://globalnews.ca/news/6245859/c...investigation/
Both times when the break happened I think thew city said Bearspaw wasn't providing any water. In 2024, they brought it back to service those smaller lines. I haven't heard they are doing that this time, and according to Farkas(from above)
Calgary is relying on the smaller Glenmore Water Treatment Plant to supply water to the entire city and surrounding communities.
that may still be the case? I went looking a few days ago to see if it was active, but couldn't find anything. You are right the communication is confusing(given they should be able to use those other lines like last time?), but it has been consistent in what I have found. It's all coming from Glenmore.
I'm pretty sure we'd be out of water by now if that was the case. Assuming Glenmore's capacity is accurately listed at 400ML then our daily consumption over 500 doesn't square at all...pretty sure they said our potable reservoirs throughout the city total 475ML, so we would've burned through that entirely in the last 5 days.
It's totally fine for them to keep the message simple and broad though; Glenmore is essentially (but not technically) doing 'everything' from Seton to Keystone/Airdrie
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There was a June 8, 2024 briefing where they had the manager of Drinking Water Distribution to describe the system at a high level. As powderjunkie reasoned, Bearspaw by default can/already moves water northwards on separate mains. At that time it was still producing 130 megalitres; it could do even more but the NW/North couldn't actually use or store any more water or move it to other areas.
The water pressure zone map show in his presentation can be found here:
The North Calgary Water Servicing project should come in handy, allowing for more water to reach the NE from a separate path. The NE is probably the region most affected since it's so far from both Bearspaw and Glenmore.
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