OLDS — For the past couple of days, Town of Olds crews have been tackling a water main break at 43rd Street and 51st Avenue.
Director of Infrastructure Adrian Pedro said the leak was reported Dec. 10.
Crews are also investigating a water main break which led to a water shut-off last week in the Violet Close area that lasted for at least 90 minutes.
In the case of the 43rd Street and 51st Avenue water main break, Pedro told the Albertan that there was a leak on the town's side, the main; and there appears to be a leak at a curb stop, the valve on property that feeds into a home or building.
"We have repaired the leak on the town’s side of the line," he wrote in a Dec. 13 email. "There appears to be a leak on the private side of the water service which requires further investigation." That leak was repaired Dec. 14, Pedro said later.
"In older neighbourhoods, it's pretty common that those curb stops stop working (and/or) they start leaking,” he said during an interview.
The water main break in the Violet Close area however, is a different story.
Nearly a week ago, the town issued a notice on its Facebook page that water would be temporarily shut off there for a couple of hours due to a leak.
Pedro suspects that leak may be part of the town’s issue with water infiltrating sewer and water infrastructure, a problem that’s anticipated to cost the town about $2.3 million this year.
In its 2024 budget, the town allocated $1.5 million to work on the problem.
“It's a little bit more -- maybe more complex (than the 43rd Street and 51st Avenue problem),” Pedro said.
“There's actually water entering into the sanitary sewer line.
And at this point, given how much water is coming in, it hit us. That presumably tells us that there's a leak from the water main side.”
Pedro said that problem was discovered about two weeks ago.
"We've been trying to triage where that leak could be coming from and that's involved shutting down certain parts of the water main in the area. And at this point, we are still searching,” he said.
Pedro said some acoustical testing is slated to occur this Thursday and Friday.
“They may have to go one step further and expose certain areas of the water main to try to pinpoint the source of the problem.
“We're not entirely sure where that leak is coming from, so we're still in the investigation phase,” he said.
Pedro said no one in the Violet Close area is short of water while this investigation is underway.
He said they did have to shut water off late last week for about 90 minutes, but “that was the only area that would that would have been affected throughout the remainder of the process.”
“We've shut shut-off valves, but they're not actually feeding any properties at this point,” he added.
Pedro was asked if those two are the only water main breaks in town.
“(They’re) the current ones we know about,” he said. “Given the town’s water loss and I & I issues, it's very possible that there's other leaks that we haven't found yet.
“And we do have some areas that that require some investigation where we're suspicious that there might be a leak, but that's part of what our I and I program is for next year.”
He said staff are already working on that plan.
Pedro said the plan will have “a lot of moving parts” and could run from town crews investigating the problem, all the way to bringing contractors in to reline manholes or even dig up and replace water infrastructure.
“But prior to any of that, during the investigation phase, we're going to be bringing in some advanced leak detection contractors,” he said.
"On the water side, that should prove quite helpful in identifying the types of areas where we may have water leaks and the water main, so that's one of our first steps.”
The weather in November and December so far has vacillated a bit between relatively warm and relatively cool. In spring, the fluctuations in temperature often result in water main breaks. Pedro was asked if that’s what caused the breaks.
“No, not specifically,” he said.
He said weather could be a contributor “but it’s certainly not the only contributor.”
“Oftentimes it's just it could be age of infrastructure, or if there was, for example, a shift in in the ground conditions and it caused a break or a pinhole somewhere.
“So there there's all kinds of reasons that there could be a leak. It's not uncommon for those types of issues in older infrastructure.”
