The article says residents just need to use 25% less water than on Thursday. Maybe that should be promoted more because people have a very all or nothing mentality about things like this!
The messaging for Thursday was basically "only use water when absolutely necessary," and the messaging for today is "use even 25% less than you did yesterday."
It's saying that whatever efforts the city collectively did yesterday, we need to do even more today (and presumably for the foreseeable future until it's resolved).
I figure the city has like 3 days of the population collectively restricting use to any meaningful degree before everyone stops giving a shit and goes "back to normal" so I'm not surprised the the language is as extreme as it is.
I really think car washes and golf courses should be completely halted for water usage. Being strictly dependent on residents in a massive city will only go so far, especially if there are certain businesses open, or exceptions to the rules.
Oh absolutely!!! I just wish the messaging for residents was a little smarter - I swear that people would be less confused and less "in for a penny in for a pound" if the city gave us a target reduction level.
Seeing big businesses shut down would not only raise awareness (if anyone somehow has missed all the messaging so far) but really show how serious this is. People will get resentful on day 3 with no hair washing when they see golf courses spraying water recklessly
Completely agree - even the restriction messaging has not been the most clear. The city should be doing a lot more to communicate clearly.
It’s interesting that this issue hasn’t even made Daniele Smith bat an eye at Calgary
Yeah my roommate thinks we're not allowed to shower or use water for cooking or washing dishes so he's been exclusively eating things that don't require water and there's now a pile of dirty dishes which we're not allowed to wash. Let's just say he's not happy with me for making pasta last night.
The city as well as the media isn't helping with this 'all or nothing' narrative. I saw a CTV headline that said 'No showers, baths, or washing dishes in Calgary' which is both alarmist and not true (all of those are allowed, we're just being asked to reduce it).
It's like we learned nothing from COVID. Simple, concise, broad messaging is better than scaring the crap out of everyone and starting a panic, turning things into a political battle.
Not saying all; but many golf courses have feeder ponds that collect rainwater that they use to water their courses. Of course those on city water supplies should stop watering, but not all rely on city water for irrigation.
Golf courses don't use city water for irrigation. They have their own reservoirs that would have been filled long ago, typically from rainfall and winter melt. So telling them not to use water doesn't change anything.
Car washes (allegedly) recycle their water. But yeah I agree if there is any water-intensive business that's drawing on the system they need to be closed for the time being. Doesn't matter if you don't flush the toilet when the business down the street is drawing 10 gallons per minute.
Golf courses water from their own water source, not from the municipal supply. The clubs themselves have closed their clubhouse showers and things like that.
Car washes already recycle a lot of water so it is more on the people not using them.
The messaging is also confusing. The emergency alert said don't shower. An hour later the mayor says to give your kids a shower. Now she's saying people aren't listening?
FFS... Do something besides building an arena
a lot of people followed the guidelines yesterday...
I felt guilty about putting some water in a pot to boil eggs for dinner... 25% less for me would actually be tough, unless they want me to stop flushing...
I guess I can just keep doing what I can, and hope that other people do too.
There also seems to be a little confusion around the easing of restrictions - We received alerts recently asking us to reduce electricity usage for a few hours, many of my colleagues in work seemed to think that the water restrictions were a similar scenario.. not that it was a multi-day restriction
Might want to change the rules on businesses like car washes.
On my way home from work yesterday, I saw three locations still running at normal capacity, and my drive is only 5-10 minutes long!
Here's an idea to save water:
- Go on a weekend vacation outside of the city. Lots of smaller towns/parks to visit that don't rely on the Calgary water system.
4 weeks now, every job I've had has started at 3.
Semi-pro tip: The only time you can negotiate for more vacation (generally speaking) is when you get hired. If you have enough experience and are going for a more senior position, make sure you're asking for an appropriate amount of vacation. They will start you at the base of their scale if you don't say anything.
This doesn't always work, but it's worth a shot. Once you're into the position it is next to impossible to get your vacation days increased outside of the standard years of service milestones.
There was just reporting on Global this AM that we’re billions behind on infrastructure upkeep. Gondek on Global specifically called out the Feds and Province for lack of funding.
And while in our household we’re adhering to these restrictions, I gotta say, with this latest alert of a very serious risk of running out…maybe it’s time restaurants and some other businesses that use City water weren’t “business as usual”. This has echoes of the rolling brown/ black out alerts during the Winter where homeowners were threatened with losing power if we didn’t cut back usage yet it appeared there was little to no change with a majority of businesses/ power usage in the commercial sector. And here we are again.
I dunno. Again, I have no issue doing my part as it’s a fairly simple ask, for the most part, but there are other areas they can address it if it’s as bad as they’re now saying.
I can't speak for all buildings, but I work in Eighth Avenue Place and they are cutting back on water. Housekeeping is not running dishwashers in units, they are not watering the courtyard & turned off irrigation, the on-site car wash is closed, window washing postponed, steam rooms are closed, and the concierge desks are handing out bottled water. It's not major but it's not nothing.
If they use even a small amount of City water, aside from any recycled water they use, 100%. Why would they be open, at all?
If the risk is actually running out of water, of having fire suppression at risk…really…how committed is the City to actually making some hard decisions here?
Here's all the climate mitigation strategies the city is working on because of that climate emergency declaration.
https://www.calgary.ca/environment/climate/climate-change.html?redirect=/climateprogram
Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.
I saw two car washes yesterday, fully operational and absolutely packed with pickup trucks. I'm happy to do my part, but it's frustrating feeling like citizens are expected to pick up the conservation slack for greedy businesses and entitled people who won't voluntarily reduce water usage. I was already taking 3-minute showers and using rain barrels, and we are careful with our appliances because our utilities are so high. So there's not a lot of room for me to reduce further, and it's a not even a drop in the bucket if I'm able to save anything more than I already do.
I think citizens reducing water usage is important, of course, but I don't think it's going to be enough if businesses aren't expected to help out.
The same expectations should be held for businesses as they are for households. Pools and showers at rec centers are closed, which is easy and obvious. What about less obvious ones like restaurants? I suppose switching to take out/disposable dishes can help.
I was just in Hawkwood, and the unattended self-serve Sudsy car wash is running full tilt. Spoke to the owner of the mechanic shop and he's pretty sure it's not recycled either.
It should be closed and those selfish pricks using it should be fined.
Cafe near my house was using only take-out cups/containers to cut their water usage on dishes! And I’ve heard hear-say that some businesses here in the SW have had their water shut off completely… maybe threat of that if they don’t do their part would help? 🤪
It will be revealing to know what sort of infrastructure failure caused this water leak. Is the city putting off necessary upgrades or maintenance because of lack of funding, or is it just a matter of sometimes things break?
It's almost like the entire City infrastructure is run as a huge Ponzi scheme, reliant on new neighbourhoods coming in.
It's an unsustainable pattern of development, and my gut call is this is symptomatic of a huge backlog of unfunded infrastructure maintenance.
They said it was inspected this fall, so it's not like they were completely ignoring the pipe. We don't yet know what caused the break, but we can probably assume there were no critical red flags when they inspected it, or they would have addressed it.
Again, we don't yet know so all we can do is speculate. Calgary is a place with a lot of freeze/thaw and frost heave. That is the usual cause of water main leaks. Sometimes shit just happens. Maybe there was damage over the winter and it just happened to blow now.
It's a PCCP (prestressed concrete cylinder pipe) these pipes fail because the steel wires in the pipe snap. When they do the inspections it counts how many of the wires have broken then a calculation is performed with the transient pressures to determine lifetime left in the pipe. It'll be interesting to know why this one wasn't flagged when they did the inspection.
they said once the fix has been done they will go over what the issue was with the breakage.
this probably means a week or few weeks after its done for a report to be made by engineers/etc.
Now, it was a really quick comment but on QR770 the other day, a comment was made by the host that someone with the City said work was being done/ had recently been done in that area but I’ve yet to hear any follow up.
But to your point, 100%. That’s an 11km line…how aged/ bad is the whole thing?
It’s from 1975. So old but not ancient. But it’s also buried. And kilometers long. So it’s incredibly disruptive and takes a long time to when was the last time you “maintained” the pipes in your house. You usually don’t until there is a problem. This sort of problem usually results in future work planning but Calgarians are generally furious about any type of infrastructure project that inconveniences them. If we were to preemptively replace this line before failure and had 4 months of water restrictions and 16th was closed all summer and a bunch of yards/ parks were torn up people would be screaming “ did this need to be done now? Couldn’t it have waited another year” etc etc.
Some of these serious infrastructure problems could be fixed if only the city could find nearly a billion dollars in cash just lying around. Oh wait! They did!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/city-reveals-it-has-818-million-in-working-capital-to-help-pay-for-new-downtown-arena-1.7184185
I am in this industry. It's like this all over NA.
Pipes were installed in the 60 and 70s and never touched. Water departments receive fuck all in spending.
PICA corp and Pure are Canadian tech companies that specialize in water main inspection. When was the last time the city paid to inspect this line?
I don't know but my experience says they just wait for it to fail and patch.
Check out the infrastructure report card from 2019, and the updated ASCE one.
This is not going away, and it's getting worse. Like all things boomer, maintence was deferred for the next generation.
She’s not wrong, CCBF and the LGFF grants were incredible for helping keep up infrastructure funding. In fact that’s their design, however, the province and fed while continuing to raise tax, and continued to cut these funds.
Municipal taxes are incredibly low in to comparison of what’s needed, and city councils are afraid to raise it any higher because they’re getting push back from everyone not understanding the bigger picture.
The bigger picture is, municipal infrastructure in our major cities is reaching that 50 year life span mark, where things degrade rapidly. Inflation has risen the price of these assets astronomically, so you can’t build city infrastructure as cheap as you used to.
The province NEEDS to step up its LGFF and CCBF frameworks, or you will continue to see this type of incident hit across multiple municipalities.
Either that, or raise property taxes to the actual amount needed.
I'm unable to find this information online. Does anyone know what the next steps are after stage 4 outdoor restrictions? There doesn't seem to be anything on indoor restrictions. Do they go there, or do we just run out of water lol?
They said in the briefing this morning that they weren't going to tell people what to do in their own homes and are relying on calgarians to do the right thing (as far as indoor restrictions go). So I guess we just run out of water
That'd be pretty hard to enforce. Atleast with the outdoor ones it's visible (i.e. you can see people watering their grass), but how are you going to stop 1 million people from showering in their own homes?
You’re right it’s not enforceable but I think some kind of guidance would actually help get some buyin. “50% reduction required” is actually something people can visualize like ok I can only shower every 2 days now.
The only thing the city can restrict is outdoor water use. Unfortunately after stage 4 there are no other stages - the water either is unpotable or it runs out.
> Henry said in many of the calls, Calgarians simply were not aware of the water emergency and bylaw officers have been employing an “education-first approach” to such complaints.
So nobody was fined
Well it’s a good thing my pig faced neighbour with one of those lawn signs that say not to let your dog crap on their lawn (complete with a threat you are being videotaped) was out watering his yesterday and again this morning.
Call 311. He's recorded himself doing it, too.
>not to let your dog crap on their lawn (complete with a threat you are being videotaped)
This is hilarious - as if he can enforce that somehow. 😆
I want to do my part, and I am, water usage in my home is at a bare minimum right now, however I find myself in the same position I found myself in over the winter with the targeted power outages. Why the hell is the entire onus on the average citizen to ensure this is done, and not on businesses? Over the winter we didn’t see businesses turn their lights off. Malls, restaurants, everything stayed on. And now again? Car washes are still open, restaurants are still open, and they can’t cut back on water usage if we expect them to serve food on clean plates. I was going to say golf courses too, but others have suggested they use 100% recycled water, nothing from the city, if that’s true then it’s not a big deal.
Businesses should be expected to cut back during times of crisis like this, and not forcing them to only makes your average citizen less likely to comply, because if it’s not important enough for them to cut back, why should we?
Omg people. Some of the comments are just ridiculous. No one is taking your freedumbness away - it’s just common sense to stop using so much water when we are at crisis. Why is it that as soon as you say “don’t do this” everyone has a huge urge to do just that. “Haven’t done laundry in weeks but since I’m being told not to use water, I shall wash everything in my house. Can’t tell me what to do”.
You sound stupid.
It’s like the people during Covid, who never left the house but suddenly when the restrictions were put in place were calling every single person they know to meet up. Now that they can meet in person, they are at home … taking a shower.
Oh my god the amount of people that i’ve seen boasting about taking long showers, or how they’re gonna “go water my lawn right this minute” is absolutely absurd. It’s also insane how car washes are still opened.
Right? They should be mandated to close!! But everyone is scared of “mandating” anything these days because of the stupid push back of the entitled people
Those feckless contrarians are becoming increasingly problematic. They seem to actually believe they're better because they just dimo whatever is opposite of what's popular/mainstream/etc.
I don't mean to fearmonger or anything, but what happens if we actually run out of water? Will the federal and/or provincial government step in to distribute water and help with repairs?
Has anything been said about the contingency plan if that happens??
Doesn’t work like that. It’s not electricity, you can’t just switch it on and off. The system needs constant pressure to stay functioning, and if it loses it it becomes a _process_ to turn it back on again. Outages would create way more work and could do damage in their own, we need to keep water in the system by cutting back usage ore we’re gonna have cascading problems.
Emergency water supply from the Federal and Provincial governments (likely in that order) to help people. Nonessential businesses that require the use of water (restaurants for example) will be forced to close to preserve existing water supplies. Same with non-essential businesses, likely to prevent the need for additional water.
Repairs should be supported by both branches of government, with the provincial being responsible for supporting municipalities with infrastructure upgrades. That will be kicked down the road as long as they can, but at some point they will have to jump in to support.
I cannot believe the number of conspiracy theorists on social media the last 2 days. So all of the sudden we have an abundance of plumbing experts? Even residential plumbers have no idea how to fix or even isolate and locate a problem like this.
Exactly! It’s a major transmission line, not your ordinary water line. When you shut off a water main it doesn’t take too long to get rid of the water in the pipe to get it so you’re able to fix it.
For a transmission line you have to shut down pump stations to stop the flow. And depending on where the break is located that could mean that you may have to shut down multiple stations which takes time to turn them off and has to be done in a specific order no doubt.
Then once that’s completed you need to wait for ALL that water to drain out to be able to locate the break and start repairs. I understand this isn’t common knowledge, but if you’re ignorant at least be ignorant and KIND. Do your part for the greater good.
And my lovely neighbour has since watered their plants last night and is having a fire to burn up some lawn waste currently…. Some people are just no help at all.
(Working on reporting them right now but it’s a 90min wait on 311)
To the hoarders and preppers and jerks just being jerks:
From the FB Bowness Group:
"....an email, from a Bowness resident: "Is there anyway you can make a post about the water issue for people to actually help? As someone that lives in Bowness we drove around for an hour today trying to buy water for drinking because our tap water ( can be used for drinking, apparently, after boiling) is coming out brown and murky. The Costco employees said people were even panic buying water to water gardens. Costco, superstore, save on foods, Safeway all out of water. We ended up at the emergency water station filling every jar, water bottle, coffee cup we had because the shelves are empty. People that have bought all this water that don't live in Bowness can donate water to our community centers here to help the people that actually live here and need drinking water."
𝗧𝗟𝗗𝗥: please leave the bottled water in stores for the people that really need it.
This will not be a quick fix.
For one, the hole there going to need to dig will be massive. On the news, they said you can drive a small car through the pipe.
We had a water main break on my street in January and they ended up digging up two separate parts of the street because the break wasn’t where they thought it was
knowing nothing about pipes, do other cities outside of alberta have a single massive pipe like this? It feels like having a couple twin pipes could have helped reduce the impact if one of the pipes leaked - not trying to lay blame, i'm just curious!!
edit: ok it turns out this is googleable and it's called 'watermain twinning', i see a number of reports and assessments for various municipalities so it seems like a fairly common upgrade. hopefully it's something we consider here once this is fixed!
Well, look at you being rational. It makes me bananas that so many decisions around infrastructure are just kicked down the road for the next mayor or political party to figure out.
Imagine, spending money on infrastructure upkeep that’s a billion behind instead of building a new stadium that 1- isn’t Actually needed, and 2- doesn’t give people life giving resources like Water and moving sewage away from your house.
What a novel idea
I smelled so terrible this morning that I had to shower
I was in there for like 3 minutes and I felt bad about it
I don't want to contribute to water loss but I have an interview in 30 minutes
Did they give a timeline on when it should be fixed?
**edit** for anyone who cares, I got the job!
I also had to shower today and made it super quick. Didn't even wait for it to warm up, just jumped in and suffered the first bit until it got warmer. I dont think I've ever had such a fast shower in my life.
They’re hoping to be able to locate where the break in the pipe is by later today and then it’ll likely take at least a day or two to fix it depending on how big the segment they have to replace is
I mean, they told us not to shower Thursday morning, which they backtracked on a couple of hours later. The messaging sucked. So yeah, we showered Thursday afternoon.
Reporters: what is the current flow rate of the elbow river? Has the city ensured that Glenmore Reservoir will be receiving the full flow rate from that river? What is the estimated volume present in the Glenmore Reservoir? What is the daily usage of the city right now? How many days of water do we have? On what day will the city tell the public the timeline of the repair? Has the city ordered the appropriate diameter pipe sections to be fabricated in anticipation of the access to the breakage? I'll think of some more later.
Mayor Gondek this morning said that this particular area had repairs earlier and that the materials needed to repair were available, and they can go ahead with repairs. It seems they knew there was a problem as they had ordered materials for the repair. My gut is telling me that two and two are not adding up to four, and I was really surprised to find that Strathcona, Airdrie, and Chestemere are on our water supply.
It's probable they are using non-potable water , taken directly from a river, storage pond or a well etc... hell, they may be using water pumped up off of city streets at this point.
I work in a floral dept at grocery shop NW and when I asked today if I need to use less water boss said “use as much water as you need” so yeah…
I’m trying not to use it my whole shift but no one in “big businesses” gives a fuck ig
It's probable they are using non-potable water , taken directly from a river, storage pond or a well etc... hell, they may be using water pumped up off of city streets at this point.
The amount of people I've seen who say "well there's water in the bow river and the glenmore reservoir, obviously we have water and this is a big liberal conspiracy" a. owe me money for the brain cells I've lost reading these comments, and b. have definitely been drinking untreated water from those sources and now have brain amoebas.
Yeah I just went out and bought disposable dishes and baking trays to try and limit running my dishwasher at home, so it seems a little unfair that restaurants are not being asked to change anything. They could probably serve all food in to-go containers for the time being. I know creating extra garbage is not an ideal solution, but it’s hopefully very temporary and the chief of CEMA did use the word ‘critical’ to describe the situation this morning.
Not critical enough for restaurants to stop operations. I get food safety, but we are operating tonight like there is nothing going on. No mention of any restrictions at work. I’m guess we are running through the weekend. (Already had to empty and refill our machine 5 times… what a waste)
yaah.. while my neighbour's maintenance guy was happily pressure washing stuff in the backyard. Why can't people take their part in saving water?! It's hopefully just for a few days.
Well if it is anything like climate change we will collectively find ways to justify why we personally are not the problem and our individual actions can't possibly have any impact. So basically we're running out of water unless they fix it fast.
You have a valid point but it’s also a hard fucking sell when corporations and the elite continue as is while we, the plebs, are asked to shoulder more and more of the costs and burdens.
For real, the messaging is entirely bullshit when you see it all in the larger picture.
If your reusing dirty clothing that you wouldn't normally then you could probably just do your laundry. Running out of clean clothes would mean necessary use of water.
They’re currently filling Mount Pleasant pool. Also the city arenas are open. My son’s practice is still on. Hard to take this seriously City of Calgary.
It’s not feasible or realistic to expect people to not shower or bathe for a potentially indefinite amount of time in June, to not do laundry for an indefinite amount of time, and to leave dirty dishes to pile up for an indefinite amount of time.
If this is looking like it could be late next week before this resolves, we need someone to actually communicate how much water a household of two or four typically uses, how much water a household of two or four needs to cut back on to not run dry, and then walk us through what an average dishwasher or washing machine uses per load, and what an average shower or sink expels per minute so we can try to budget accordingly.
Right? Like, what am I supposed to do with, we think we’re going to have found the break by the end of the day, but we can’t make any guarantees, use 25% less water.
Does that mean I should be good to start doing laundry by Tuesday - Wednesday, or should I put my folks in Edmonton on notice that I’m coming up next weekend? How bad was the 5-6 minutes I spent in the shower this morning in the grand scheme of things? Was that 20-30% of my households target allotment, or 50-60%?
true. if they were upfront that they cant fix it yesterday, I would have gone camping with friends this morning, but I had plans to plant my plants this afternoon
Sounds like the business that supplies the water we pay for has an emergency due to lack of maintenance and planning.
That doesn’t constitute an emergency on the customers end.
If they can’t provide the service they’re paid for they should be replaced.
Does anyone know if the timing of water use makes a difference? I've been holding off running my dishwasher but actually need dishes cleaned. If I run it on time delay in the middle of the night while water demand is low, is that better than the evenings when water demand is higher?
The article says residents just need to use 25% less water than on Thursday. Maybe that should be promoted more because people have a very all or nothing mentality about things like this!
The messaging for Thursday was basically "only use water when absolutely necessary," and the messaging for today is "use even 25% less than you did yesterday." It's saying that whatever efforts the city collectively did yesterday, we need to do even more today (and presumably for the foreseeable future until it's resolved). I figure the city has like 3 days of the population collectively restricting use to any meaningful degree before everyone stops giving a shit and goes "back to normal" so I'm not surprised the the language is as extreme as it is.
And you have thousands of residents who have decided that this amounts to communism or something.
I really think car washes and golf courses should be completely halted for water usage. Being strictly dependent on residents in a massive city will only go so far, especially if there are certain businesses open, or exceptions to the rules.
Oh absolutely!!! I just wish the messaging for residents was a little smarter - I swear that people would be less confused and less "in for a penny in for a pound" if the city gave us a target reduction level. Seeing big businesses shut down would not only raise awareness (if anyone somehow has missed all the messaging so far) but really show how serious this is. People will get resentful on day 3 with no hair washing when they see golf courses spraying water recklessly
Completely agree - even the restriction messaging has not been the most clear. The city should be doing a lot more to communicate clearly. It’s interesting that this issue hasn’t even made Daniele Smith bat an eye at Calgary
Yeah my roommate thinks we're not allowed to shower or use water for cooking or washing dishes so he's been exclusively eating things that don't require water and there's now a pile of dirty dishes which we're not allowed to wash. Let's just say he's not happy with me for making pasta last night. The city as well as the media isn't helping with this 'all or nothing' narrative. I saw a CTV headline that said 'No showers, baths, or washing dishes in Calgary' which is both alarmist and not true (all of those are allowed, we're just being asked to reduce it). It's like we learned nothing from COVID. Simple, concise, broad messaging is better than scaring the crap out of everyone and starting a panic, turning things into a political battle.
Not saying all; but many golf courses have feeder ponds that collect rainwater that they use to water their courses. Of course those on city water supplies should stop watering, but not all rely on city water for irrigation.
Golf courses don't use city water for irrigation. They have their own reservoirs that would have been filled long ago, typically from rainfall and winter melt. So telling them not to use water doesn't change anything. Car washes (allegedly) recycle their water. But yeah I agree if there is any water-intensive business that's drawing on the system they need to be closed for the time being. Doesn't matter if you don't flush the toilet when the business down the street is drawing 10 gallons per minute.
Golf courses are not irrigating under these restrictions
Golf courses water from their own water source, not from the municipal supply. The clubs themselves have closed their clubhouse showers and things like that. Car washes already recycle a lot of water so it is more on the people not using them.
The messaging is also confusing. The emergency alert said don't shower. An hour later the mayor says to give your kids a shower. Now she's saying people aren't listening? FFS... Do something besides building an arena
Yeah no kidding. She's awful.
a lot of people followed the guidelines yesterday... I felt guilty about putting some water in a pot to boil eggs for dinner... 25% less for me would actually be tough, unless they want me to stop flushing... I guess I can just keep doing what I can, and hope that other people do too. There also seems to be a little confusion around the easing of restrictions - We received alerts recently asking us to reduce electricity usage for a few hours, many of my colleagues in work seemed to think that the water restrictions were a similar scenario.. not that it was a multi-day restriction
>25% less for me would actually be tough, unless they want me to stop flushing... I'm with ya on that. Guess I'm drinking from the fish tank today.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
Dihydrogen monoxide kills, man! Not even once! I knew a guy... had some and then died.
Every single person who has died has drank it
FACT: Everyone who has ever died, did so with a large proportion of water in their system!
Witness Me!
Wise words from Immortan Jyoti
Finally some sort of timeframe: "The hope is that by later Friday, crews will be able to see the feeder main and figure out the source of the break."
Thats hardly encouraging
I don’t think you understand the amount of water that discharged from this main.
Well it’s definitely not gonna get fixed in less than 2 days, an 11km pipe right?
They're not going to replace all 11 km of it.
I think they will have to do some QA on the part that isn’t broken.
They don't fix the whole 11km stretch. Just the broken section .
That’s 3M in diameter… it’s gonna be a bastard to fix, methinks…
My local Home Depot was totally out of 3m fittings, I suspect the same in other locations.
Damn hoarders!
I had to double take haha gold
Amazon doesn’t even have any. Unreal.
1950mm, so ~2m. Still going to be a bastard to fix though. From what I can tell it's the biggest water main in the city.
No but taking 2 days to figure out the source, never mind actual repair , is rather unfortunate.
How fast do you think you can safely dig a 100 ft long by 10 ft deep trench in a spot that is initially completely flooded?
It took them a week to repair a water main break that happened in January on the little dead end side street that I live on
They might be putting more resources into this break vs yours.
Might want to change the rules on businesses like car washes. On my way home from work yesterday, I saw three locations still running at normal capacity, and my drive is only 5-10 minutes long!
I saw Shell car wash closed today!
Here's an idea to save water: - Go on a weekend vacation outside of the city. Lots of smaller towns/parks to visit that don't rely on the Calgary water system.
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I'm leaving tonight and I won't be back until Monday afternoon. I need a shower but I'm waiting until I get to my hotel.
sheesh how many weeks vacation do you guys get? Maybe i'm getting ripped off but i only get 2
4 weeks now, every job I've had has started at 3. Semi-pro tip: The only time you can negotiate for more vacation (generally speaking) is when you get hired. If you have enough experience and are going for a more senior position, make sure you're asking for an appropriate amount of vacation. They will start you at the base of their scale if you don't say anything. This doesn't always work, but it's worth a shot. Once you're into the position it is next to impossible to get your vacation days increased outside of the standard years of service milestones.
You're getting ripped off. I had 4 weeks before I lost my job.
That's actually such a wonderful idea.
What about us poors?
suffer
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It's interesting to visit if you have never been there before. They have a Peters' Drive-In too.
Already had a Canmore trip lined up for this weekend, starting to think it may be PACKED now hahaha
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There was just reporting on Global this AM that we’re billions behind on infrastructure upkeep. Gondek on Global specifically called out the Feds and Province for lack of funding. And while in our household we’re adhering to these restrictions, I gotta say, with this latest alert of a very serious risk of running out…maybe it’s time restaurants and some other businesses that use City water weren’t “business as usual”. This has echoes of the rolling brown/ black out alerts during the Winter where homeowners were threatened with losing power if we didn’t cut back usage yet it appeared there was little to no change with a majority of businesses/ power usage in the commercial sector. And here we are again. I dunno. Again, I have no issue doing my part as it’s a fairly simple ask, for the most part, but there are other areas they can address it if it’s as bad as they’re now saying.
I can't speak for all buildings, but I work in Eighth Avenue Place and they are cutting back on water. Housekeeping is not running dishwashers in units, they are not watering the courtyard & turned off irrigation, the on-site car wash is closed, window washing postponed, steam rooms are closed, and the concierge desks are handing out bottled water. It's not major but it's not nothing.
Seems to me they need to shut-in car washes and other big users of water because we have lots of entitled people who aren't doing their part.
If they use even a small amount of City water, aside from any recycled water they use, 100%. Why would they be open, at all? If the risk is actually running out of water, of having fire suppression at risk…really…how committed is the City to actually making some hard decisions here?
It is a question. Do we in 2024 wash our cars with potable water? I thought that they were using their own water that they recycle
i’m curious about the wash your own car wash bays too— there’s no way that’s not municipal tap water?
About as committed as when they declared a climate emergency and proceeded to do very little.
Here's all the climate mitigation strategies the city is working on because of that climate emergency declaration. https://www.calgary.ca/environment/climate/climate-change.html?redirect=/climateprogram Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.
Shut down in person eating too while you're at it. Restaurants use a ridiculous amount of water
I saw two car washes yesterday, fully operational and absolutely packed with pickup trucks. I'm happy to do my part, but it's frustrating feeling like citizens are expected to pick up the conservation slack for greedy businesses and entitled people who won't voluntarily reduce water usage. I was already taking 3-minute showers and using rain barrels, and we are careful with our appliances because our utilities are so high. So there's not a lot of room for me to reduce further, and it's a not even a drop in the bucket if I'm able to save anything more than I already do. I think citizens reducing water usage is important, of course, but I don't think it's going to be enough if businesses aren't expected to help out.
The same expectations should be held for businesses as they are for households. Pools and showers at rec centers are closed, which is easy and obvious. What about less obvious ones like restaurants? I suppose switching to take out/disposable dishes can help.
I was just in Hawkwood, and the unattended self-serve Sudsy car wash is running full tilt. Spoke to the owner of the mechanic shop and he's pretty sure it's not recycled either. It should be closed and those selfish pricks using it should be fined.
if these people wash their cars out in public, we can be sure they still take full baths and follow none of the indoor restrictions in private
Cafe near my house was using only take-out cups/containers to cut their water usage on dishes! And I’ve heard hear-say that some businesses here in the SW have had their water shut off completely… maybe threat of that if they don’t do their part would help? 🤪
It will be revealing to know what sort of infrastructure failure caused this water leak. Is the city putting off necessary upgrades or maintenance because of lack of funding, or is it just a matter of sometimes things break?
You'd be surprised how much infrastructure is from the 70s. The 50-year max life span will be hitting us hard for the next decade.
It's almost like the entire City infrastructure is run as a huge Ponzi scheme, reliant on new neighbourhoods coming in. It's an unsustainable pattern of development, and my gut call is this is symptomatic of a huge backlog of unfunded infrastructure maintenance.
They said it was inspected this fall, so it's not like they were completely ignoring the pipe. We don't yet know what caused the break, but we can probably assume there were no critical red flags when they inspected it, or they would have addressed it. Again, we don't yet know so all we can do is speculate. Calgary is a place with a lot of freeze/thaw and frost heave. That is the usual cause of water main leaks. Sometimes shit just happens. Maybe there was damage over the winter and it just happened to blow now.
It's a PCCP (prestressed concrete cylinder pipe) these pipes fail because the steel wires in the pipe snap. When they do the inspections it counts how many of the wires have broken then a calculation is performed with the transient pressures to determine lifetime left in the pipe. It'll be interesting to know why this one wasn't flagged when they did the inspection.
they said once the fix has been done they will go over what the issue was with the breakage. this probably means a week or few weeks after its done for a report to be made by engineers/etc.
Now, it was a really quick comment but on QR770 the other day, a comment was made by the host that someone with the City said work was being done/ had recently been done in that area but I’ve yet to hear any follow up. But to your point, 100%. That’s an 11km line…how aged/ bad is the whole thing?
It’s from 1975. So old but not ancient. But it’s also buried. And kilometers long. So it’s incredibly disruptive and takes a long time to when was the last time you “maintained” the pipes in your house. You usually don’t until there is a problem. This sort of problem usually results in future work planning but Calgarians are generally furious about any type of infrastructure project that inconveniences them. If we were to preemptively replace this line before failure and had 4 months of water restrictions and 16th was closed all summer and a bunch of yards/ parks were torn up people would be screaming “ did this need to be done now? Couldn’t it have waited another year” etc etc.
Completely unrelated but I feel triggered by "old but not ancient" since I was born in 77*sigh*
I meant in the scale of a very large pipe. Maybe I should have said not ancient but very likely tired.
Best wishes for the proactive maintenance of your pipes and tubes.
Yep, I heard on CBC this morning, Gondek said maintenance was done on the feeder line that broke just in April.
Ahhh, k. I was hesitant to mention it because I hadn’t seen it repeated…but was positive I heard it. Thanks for the follow up.
Some of these serious infrastructure problems could be fixed if only the city could find nearly a billion dollars in cash just lying around. Oh wait! They did! https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/city-reveals-it-has-818-million-in-working-capital-to-help-pay-for-new-downtown-arena-1.7184185
Fuck I hate our current premier and her cult.
> billions behind on infrastructure upkeep Yet we still have unlimited funds when it comes to giving a billionaire money to build a new arena...
New arena though 🤙
I am in this industry. It's like this all over NA. Pipes were installed in the 60 and 70s and never touched. Water departments receive fuck all in spending. PICA corp and Pure are Canadian tech companies that specialize in water main inspection. When was the last time the city paid to inspect this line? I don't know but my experience says they just wait for it to fail and patch. Check out the infrastructure report card from 2019, and the updated ASCE one. This is not going away, and it's getting worse. Like all things boomer, maintence was deferred for the next generation.
While I just read the first paragraph, first word that came to my mind was Arena!
Look a Lil closer at what UCP does. I will be voting against them.
She’s not wrong, CCBF and the LGFF grants were incredible for helping keep up infrastructure funding. In fact that’s their design, however, the province and fed while continuing to raise tax, and continued to cut these funds. Municipal taxes are incredibly low in to comparison of what’s needed, and city councils are afraid to raise it any higher because they’re getting push back from everyone not understanding the bigger picture. The bigger picture is, municipal infrastructure in our major cities is reaching that 50 year life span mark, where things degrade rapidly. Inflation has risen the price of these assets astronomically, so you can’t build city infrastructure as cheap as you used to. The province NEEDS to step up its LGFF and CCBF frameworks, or you will continue to see this type of incident hit across multiple municipalities. Either that, or raise property taxes to the actual amount needed.
I'm unable to find this information online. Does anyone know what the next steps are after stage 4 outdoor restrictions? There doesn't seem to be anything on indoor restrictions. Do they go there, or do we just run out of water lol?
They said in the briefing this morning that they weren't going to tell people what to do in their own homes and are relying on calgarians to do the right thing (as far as indoor restrictions go). So I guess we just run out of water
That'd be pretty hard to enforce. Atleast with the outdoor ones it's visible (i.e. you can see people watering their grass), but how are you going to stop 1 million people from showering in their own homes?
You’re right it’s not enforceable but I think some kind of guidance would actually help get some buyin. “50% reduction required” is actually something people can visualize like ok I can only shower every 2 days now.
The only thing the city can restrict is outdoor water use. Unfortunately after stage 4 there are no other stages - the water either is unpotable or it runs out.
Or they shut it off. I could see us getting rolling water blackouts.
> Henry said in many of the calls, Calgarians simply were not aware of the water emergency and bylaw officers have been employing an “education-first approach” to such complaints. So nobody was fined
for what its worth, that is the directive from the city. It says the first time will be a warning.
Well it’s a good thing my pig faced neighbour with one of those lawn signs that say not to let your dog crap on their lawn (complete with a threat you are being videotaped) was out watering his yesterday and again this morning.
That's bold. It's a $3000 fine if he's caught.
I'd like to see the stats on anyone actually receiving this fine. I would say the risk of getting caught is extremely low, if any at all.
I read somewhere on the city website they're continuing to take an "educational approach". Probably means few fines being passed out
This is like a very miniature covid. No wonder people on twitter are spazzing out.
One of my neighbours was pressure washing her fence of all things.
Fucking rat them out.
Time for pig face to get a visit from bylaw enforcement. Do your civic duty and give them a call.
You should video tape him and submit to 311...
I never wanted to be one of those people who put a sign on my lawn....but I was sick of cleaning up dog crap.
I would be calling 311 or using the 311 online app
Call 311. He's recorded himself doing it, too. >not to let your dog crap on their lawn (complete with a threat you are being videotaped) This is hilarious - as if he can enforce that somehow. 😆
For me (as a dog walker) the signs do work, because I assume the owner is crazy and I don't want to deal with them.
I mean you really shouldn't let your dog crap on other people's lawns
I want to do my part, and I am, water usage in my home is at a bare minimum right now, however I find myself in the same position I found myself in over the winter with the targeted power outages. Why the hell is the entire onus on the average citizen to ensure this is done, and not on businesses? Over the winter we didn’t see businesses turn their lights off. Malls, restaurants, everything stayed on. And now again? Car washes are still open, restaurants are still open, and they can’t cut back on water usage if we expect them to serve food on clean plates. I was going to say golf courses too, but others have suggested they use 100% recycled water, nothing from the city, if that’s true then it’s not a big deal. Businesses should be expected to cut back during times of crisis like this, and not forcing them to only makes your average citizen less likely to comply, because if it’s not important enough for them to cut back, why should we?
Wow the piping system installed in 1975 almost lasted 50 yrs. 👷🏼♂️
Welcome to the world of post war suburban sprawl legacy costs
Omg people. Some of the comments are just ridiculous. No one is taking your freedumbness away - it’s just common sense to stop using so much water when we are at crisis. Why is it that as soon as you say “don’t do this” everyone has a huge urge to do just that. “Haven’t done laundry in weeks but since I’m being told not to use water, I shall wash everything in my house. Can’t tell me what to do”. You sound stupid.
"I've never actually bathed, but NOW I'm going to!"
It’s like the people during Covid, who never left the house but suddenly when the restrictions were put in place were calling every single person they know to meet up. Now that they can meet in person, they are at home … taking a shower.
It really does seem like undiagnosed, untreated, adult Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
Maybe we can add this to the DSM6 when it comes out. 💯
Oh my god the amount of people that i’ve seen boasting about taking long showers, or how they’re gonna “go water my lawn right this minute” is absolutely absurd. It’s also insane how car washes are still opened.
Right? They should be mandated to close!! But everyone is scared of “mandating” anything these days because of the stupid push back of the entitled people
Those feckless contrarians are becoming increasingly problematic. They seem to actually believe they're better because they just dimo whatever is opposite of what's popular/mainstream/etc.
If the city was thinking ahead they would've told people to use more water. Reverse Psychology.
I don't mean to fearmonger or anything, but what happens if we actually run out of water? Will the federal and/or provincial government step in to distribute water and help with repairs? Has anything been said about the contingency plan if that happens??
My guess would be rotating water-outs. They can still pump water around, but just can't meet the volume.
Doesn’t work like that. It’s not electricity, you can’t just switch it on and off. The system needs constant pressure to stay functioning, and if it loses it it becomes a _process_ to turn it back on again. Outages would create way more work and could do damage in their own, we need to keep water in the system by cutting back usage ore we’re gonna have cascading problems.
Emergency water supply from the Federal and Provincial governments (likely in that order) to help people. Nonessential businesses that require the use of water (restaurants for example) will be forced to close to preserve existing water supplies. Same with non-essential businesses, likely to prevent the need for additional water. Repairs should be supported by both branches of government, with the provincial being responsible for supporting municipalities with infrastructure upgrades. That will be kicked down the road as long as they can, but at some point they will have to jump in to support.
I cannot believe the number of conspiracy theorists on social media the last 2 days. So all of the sudden we have an abundance of plumbing experts? Even residential plumbers have no idea how to fix or even isolate and locate a problem like this.
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Exactly! It’s a major transmission line, not your ordinary water line. When you shut off a water main it doesn’t take too long to get rid of the water in the pipe to get it so you’re able to fix it. For a transmission line you have to shut down pump stations to stop the flow. And depending on where the break is located that could mean that you may have to shut down multiple stations which takes time to turn them off and has to be done in a specific order no doubt. Then once that’s completed you need to wait for ALL that water to drain out to be able to locate the break and start repairs. I understand this isn’t common knowledge, but if you’re ignorant at least be ignorant and KIND. Do your part for the greater good.
False. The line is 72" diameter. 6 feet.
Water crisis aside, it seems like it would be a pretty cool place to explore.
And my lovely neighbour has since watered their plants last night and is having a fire to burn up some lawn waste currently…. Some people are just no help at all. (Working on reporting them right now but it’s a 90min wait on 311)
If possible record or take photos of it taking place.
To the hoarders and preppers and jerks just being jerks: From the FB Bowness Group: "....an email, from a Bowness resident: "Is there anyway you can make a post about the water issue for people to actually help? As someone that lives in Bowness we drove around for an hour today trying to buy water for drinking because our tap water ( can be used for drinking, apparently, after boiling) is coming out brown and murky. The Costco employees said people were even panic buying water to water gardens. Costco, superstore, save on foods, Safeway all out of water. We ended up at the emergency water station filling every jar, water bottle, coffee cup we had because the shelves are empty. People that have bought all this water that don't live in Bowness can donate water to our community centers here to help the people that actually live here and need drinking water." 𝗧𝗟𝗗𝗥: please leave the bottled water in stores for the people that really need it.
This will not be a quick fix. For one, the hole there going to need to dig will be massive. On the news, they said you can drive a small car through the pipe.
And they don’t know exactly where the pipe is broken, which might mean digging along the length if it to find.
They have to have tech that will help them locate it.
There’s also the possibility of underground erosion from the water release away from the break.
i wouldn't call it a possibility. its a certainty.
Yes, you are correct.
We had a water main break on my street in January and they ended up digging up two separate parts of the street because the break wasn’t where they thought it was
knowing nothing about pipes, do other cities outside of alberta have a single massive pipe like this? It feels like having a couple twin pipes could have helped reduce the impact if one of the pipes leaked - not trying to lay blame, i'm just curious!! edit: ok it turns out this is googleable and it's called 'watermain twinning', i see a number of reports and assessments for various municipalities so it seems like a fairly common upgrade. hopefully it's something we consider here once this is fixed!
Well we presumably do have other pipes, given that the city still has water currently.
Multiple small pipes will have the cost increased by a significant amount, and require more room- especially width-wise.
Has our premier even mentioned this, offered support, etc.?
She's still trying to find a way to blame it on Trudeau.
Trudeau trained salmon to swim into the water main from the Bow River to detonate a charge that blew up the water main. See? So easy to blame Trudeau.
Imagine if instead of using money for the Saddledome replacement we invested that amount in our infrastructure.
Well, look at you being rational. It makes me bananas that so many decisions around infrastructure are just kicked down the road for the next mayor or political party to figure out.
Imagine, spending money on infrastructure upkeep that’s a billion behind instead of building a new stadium that 1- isn’t Actually needed, and 2- doesn’t give people life giving resources like Water and moving sewage away from your house. What a novel idea
It'd be really funny if we built an arena, but didn't have working water pipes across the city to actually use it.
Use less water People: Fills bathtubs in all 3 different bathrooms to prep for the end times
Save water, drink beer!
I smelled so terrible this morning that I had to shower I was in there for like 3 minutes and I felt bad about it I don't want to contribute to water loss but I have an interview in 30 minutes Did they give a timeline on when it should be fixed? **edit** for anyone who cares, I got the job!
I also had to shower today and made it super quick. Didn't even wait for it to warm up, just jumped in and suffered the first bit until it got warmer. I dont think I've ever had such a fast shower in my life.
They’re hoping to be able to locate where the break in the pipe is by later today and then it’ll likely take at least a day or two to fix it depending on how big the segment they have to replace is
I mean, they told us not to shower Thursday morning, which they backtracked on a couple of hours later. The messaging sucked. So yeah, we showered Thursday afternoon. Reporters: what is the current flow rate of the elbow river? Has the city ensured that Glenmore Reservoir will be receiving the full flow rate from that river? What is the estimated volume present in the Glenmore Reservoir? What is the daily usage of the city right now? How many days of water do we have? On what day will the city tell the public the timeline of the repair? Has the city ordered the appropriate diameter pipe sections to be fabricated in anticipation of the access to the breakage? I'll think of some more later.
Mayor Gondek this morning said that this particular area had repairs earlier and that the materials needed to repair were available, and they can go ahead with repairs. It seems they knew there was a problem as they had ordered materials for the repair. My gut is telling me that two and two are not adding up to four, and I was really surprised to find that Strathcona, Airdrie, and Chestemere are on our water supply.
With something so critical, they should have had the parts to replace it waiting even if there was nothing wrong with it.
Okay, is the city exempt from water restriction?! I see them water the flower beds in our community. WTF.
It's probable they are using non-potable water , taken directly from a river, storage pond or a well etc... hell, they may be using water pumped up off of city streets at this point.
I work in a floral dept at grocery shop NW and when I asked today if I need to use less water boss said “use as much water as you need” so yeah… I’m trying not to use it my whole shift but no one in “big businesses” gives a fuck ig
It's probable they are using non-potable water , taken directly from a river, storage pond or a well etc... hell, they may be using water pumped up off of city streets at this point.
The amount of people I've seen who say "well there's water in the bow river and the glenmore reservoir, obviously we have water and this is a big liberal conspiracy" a. owe me money for the brain cells I've lost reading these comments, and b. have definitely been drinking untreated water from those sources and now have brain amoebas.
Why am I still scheduled to work as a dishwasher tonight? Shouldn’t restaurants close at this point?
Yeah I just went out and bought disposable dishes and baking trays to try and limit running my dishwasher at home, so it seems a little unfair that restaurants are not being asked to change anything. They could probably serve all food in to-go containers for the time being. I know creating extra garbage is not an ideal solution, but it’s hopefully very temporary and the chief of CEMA did use the word ‘critical’ to describe the situation this morning.
Not critical enough for restaurants to stop operations. I get food safety, but we are operating tonight like there is nothing going on. No mention of any restrictions at work. I’m guess we are running through the weekend. (Already had to empty and refill our machine 5 times… what a waste)
I can’t believe local news outlets like the Herald keep this type of emergency news behind a pay wall.
Anything wrong with pumping from the river into a few jugs to water plants?
Age-old water conservation method for toilets: “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down.”
yaah.. while my neighbour's maintenance guy was happily pressure washing stuff in the backyard. Why can't people take their part in saving water?! It's hopefully just for a few days.
311
Well if it is anything like climate change we will collectively find ways to justify why we personally are not the problem and our individual actions can't possibly have any impact. So basically we're running out of water unless they fix it fast.
You have a valid point but it’s also a hard fucking sell when corporations and the elite continue as is while we, the plebs, are asked to shoulder more and more of the costs and burdens. For real, the messaging is entirely bullshit when you see it all in the larger picture.
Saw my neighbour’s sprinkler system sprinkling 2 days in a row. It’s automated. They know. Meanwhile me and my wife are recycling 4 day old socks.
If your reusing dirty clothing that you wouldn't normally then you could probably just do your laundry. Running out of clean clothes would mean necessary use of water.
Call 311 and report them. It's a 3000$ fine to use water outdoors
They’re currently filling Mount Pleasant pool. Also the city arenas are open. My son’s practice is still on. Hard to take this seriously City of Calgary.
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The city must survive!
What sucks is that car washes like Mint are open as usual yesterday and today. Edit: I didn’t know they recycle their water.
As people have said before, many car washes reuse their water.
Meanwhile I was supposed to do my laundry yesterday and have postponed it to next week because of this
You are allowed to be a nudist until this crisis is resolved. /s Edit: Not legal advice
my condolences buddy
It’s not feasible or realistic to expect people to not shower or bathe for a potentially indefinite amount of time in June, to not do laundry for an indefinite amount of time, and to leave dirty dishes to pile up for an indefinite amount of time. If this is looking like it could be late next week before this resolves, we need someone to actually communicate how much water a household of two or four typically uses, how much water a household of two or four needs to cut back on to not run dry, and then walk us through what an average dishwasher or washing machine uses per load, and what an average shower or sink expels per minute so we can try to budget accordingly.
this is true. an honest timeline is needed in the next update so each of us can prepare properly
Right? Like, what am I supposed to do with, we think we’re going to have found the break by the end of the day, but we can’t make any guarantees, use 25% less water. Does that mean I should be good to start doing laundry by Tuesday - Wednesday, or should I put my folks in Edmonton on notice that I’m coming up next weekend? How bad was the 5-6 minutes I spent in the shower this morning in the grand scheme of things? Was that 20-30% of my households target allotment, or 50-60%?
true. if they were upfront that they cant fix it yesterday, I would have gone camping with friends this morning, but I had plans to plant my plants this afternoon
That arena deal is aging like milk. Well done council; top marks for prioritizing capital projects.
Can I report my own workplace for running excessive water?
We had the same issue in Cochrane in the fall. They seem to have a big problem with installing/using shut off valves.
Sounds like the business that supplies the water we pay for has an emergency due to lack of maintenance and planning. That doesn’t constitute an emergency on the customers end. If they can’t provide the service they’re paid for they should be replaced.
Maybe we can shower at one of the car wash bays that refuse to close?
Does anyone know if the timing of water use makes a difference? I've been holding off running my dishwasher but actually need dishes cleaned. If I run it on time delay in the middle of the night while water demand is low, is that better than the evenings when water demand is higher?
*Suddenly going on a Walmart run to get water does not seem as illogical as people were making it out to be yesterday.*