The tap has finally been turned off. But for five days, an immeasurable amount of drinking water gushed from a broken water main on Guy Street north of St. Jacques.
Work crews only arrived Wednesday to repair the broken eight inch main and turn off the water.
“The water was gushing all the time. It’s a huge amount of water that was wasted,” said one Montrealer who lives on the same street as the water main break.
Water had to be turned off for dozens of residents as workers tried to repair the break. But that wasn’t easy. Initially the crew on site dug in the wrong area. They then had to dig a new hole to access the pipe.
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The SouthWest borough manager responsible for water, Richard Côté said he had no choice but to wait until today to make repairs.
“We had about 10 broken pipes in the same area in one week,” he said.
Côté also argued there weren’t enough workers to repair all the broken pipes.
“We can’t be everywhere,” he said.
But the answers aren’t comforting Montrealers. More than one third of all Montreal’s drinking water is lost through leaks and main breaks.
It’s this kind of waste and incompetence that is forcing the mayor to react.
“I will look into it,” Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said during an afternoon news conference.
During the election campaign, Coderre used tough words to describe how he plans to deal with such issues.
“I will kick ass,” he said on October 1st.
Montrealers are now waiting to see if he’ll back his tough rhetoric with tough action to prevent these problems from reoccurring in the future.
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