OLDS — The town’s operations department is gearing up for the annual spring thaw when watermain breaks tend to happen, operations director Scott Greico says.
During council’s recent policies and priorities meeting, Greico said crews are anticipating the annual freeze-thaw that happens in early spring.
“Our crews will be ready to respond,” Greico said.
As of Feb. 7, the town had only suffered one watermain break that he was aware of, but it was “not the result of a freeze-thaw," he said.
According to reports, the city of Calgary was beset with at least 60 watermain breaks during cold snaps in January and around Christmas time.
Greico said the town luckily avoided that situation.
“We were good,” he said.
Greico said normally watermain breaks occur in the spring when temperatures fluctuate widely.
“We do have standard everyday operations with respect to watermain breaks, but during the cold snap, we actually made out very, very well,” he said.
He was unsure why Calgary experienced so many during the cold snaps.
Greico said the town does have some aging sewer and water infrastructure.
As a result, each year staff try to set money aside and obtain grants from senior levels of government to fund upgrades to that infrastructure. He anticipates that will be the case this year, too.
“You can only do so many upgrades, so some of the older infrastructure, we do through the Municipal Improvement Program,” Greico said. “We do sanitary relining, we do some of those municipal improvement projects.”
Big cities like Calgary have sophisticated analytics to keep close tabs on what sewer and water infrastructure they have, where it’s located and what shape it’s in, he said.
He said Olds can’t afford that technology.
The Town does have some information on the status of its sewer and water infrastructure and that information is constantly being upgraded, he said.
But they don’t have the same technology Calgary has.
“Technology to implement, it’s obviously costs,” he said. “There's a dollar figure attached to it, so it’s more of ‘how do we manage the asset, given the resources that we have?’ That’s what we’re constantly juggling with."
