An Edmonton city councillor wants more information from EPCOR about an equipment failure that has forced a non-essential water ban that’s expected to be place for nearly a week.
Ward pihêsiwin Coun. Tim Cartmell has questions around communication, potentially having replacement parts on hand and how to prepare for future water incidents — sudden or expected — so there’s less impact on people and businesses.
At 2 a.m. on Monday, there was a failure in the distribution pumping equipment systems that move water from the E.L. Smith Water Treatment Plant into the water distribution system. EPCOR’s second water treatment plant, Rossdale, doesn’t have enough water to supply the entire service area with normal amounts.
So, on Monday afternoon, EPCOR issued a mandatory non-essential water ban, asking residents to restrict discretionary water use and told businesses that use “non-essential” water, such as car washes, laundromats and rinks, to close temporarily.
On Wednesday afternoon, EPCOR said water consumption dropped from the typical daily winter average of 370-million litres a day to 335-million litres a day.
EPCOR expects it will be able to lift the ban on Sunday, after repairs are done and “the distribution network stabilized.”
“EPCOR is a pretty sophisticated company,” Carmell said Wednesday. “They’ve been doing this a long time. So the question arises: why don’t they have redundancy? Why don’t they have a spare this or a spare that so that when something goes wrong, they can put in a spare and keep going?
“My understanding is it’s electrical. Electrical is copper and that kind of material is in really short supply. Getting something manufactured — like a transformer or a motor drive — takes a long, long time, just in ordinary circumstances.
“Those are all questions that we should get answers to, but not immediately. Let’s let them fix what they need to fix first and we can have the conversation afterwards,” Cartmell said.
Craig Bonneville, director of engineering and technical services with EPCOR, said Tuesday the root cause of the failure is still being investigated.
“The actual repair is fairly complex but our crews are making really good progress on it,” he said.
Bonneville explained crews have to repair the electrical feed equipment that powers four large water pumps at the E.L. Smith plant, the largest of which are 4,000 horsepower. The failure was in the cables and some other electrical conductive and protective equipment that protects the pumps, which were not damaged, he added. Once fixed, the pumps will be restarted but it will take several days to replenish the supply.
After the immediate issue is fixed, EPCOR will be doing a deeper dive into what went wrong.
“We’ll be doing a very thorough investigation,” Bonneville said.
A drinking water treatment expert in Ontario says a failure like this is quite rare.
“It’s extremely unusual,” said University of Toronto professor Ron Hofmann. “It sort of speaks to the resilience in our water systems in general across Canada that something like this is so unusual.
“I can’t speak to the exact details of what broke … but it is surprising that there hasn’t been complete redundancy in this case.”
Most large cities require multiple water treatment plants and expand as the demand grows, Hofmann explained.
“To get water from the river where it’s sourced to the community, you have to pump the water uphill a lot of the way and that takes energy so we need big pumps to do that. … Usually they don’t break. These pumps can last for decades. But occasionally something happens and you can’t get the water where it needs to be.
“There is redundancy in the system to a certain extent but depending on the magnitude of the failure of pumps, sometimes there’s just not enough water to go the entire community.”
Hofmann said EPCOR has done a good job of communicating to the public that this is not a water safety issue but a water amount issue. And, he said councillors are right to ask questions.
“Any time a community experiences such a problem, you need to ask questions and say: ‘Why did this happen? Is this something that could have been prevented or is it just one of those things that, over 100 years, occasionally something is going to happen?'”
Cartmell hopes to get more answers at the March 4 utility committee meeting.
“When it comes to water, waste water and drainage, the utility committee is the regulator for those services, so everything from rate filings to operational oversight, so that is technically our duty.”
The councillor has some questions he hopes will lead to better communication and preparedness in the future.
“Where are we in jeopardy and have circumstances changed? Did we think we had spares? Did we think we had redundancy and we don’t? Where else do we need to shore things up?
“We should also have a conversation about what happens if we have a shortage of water,” Cartmell said. “We’ve been told that, particularly in southern Alberta, we’re looking at drought conditions, perhaps pretty severe drought conditions. Do we have that same concern here? What happens if we run into this same problem, not from an equipment failure, but from a water supply reduction or constriction?”
Cartmell said he understands that in this case, the problem was unexpected.
“When things happen very suddenly, it’s hard to give people a lot of warning, obviously. I think we all understand that. But at the same time, we expect a little bit more communication out and we expect that service gets put back in place in relatively short order.”
The water ban — expected to be about six days long — is having a big impact on businesses that rely on water.
Arthur’s Car Wash in west Edmonton would normally see between 60 and 80 vehicles come through on a day like Tuesday, owner/operator Brandon Ekert said. But the car wash was closed.
“This is probably my first busy week since the cold snap two weeks ago. I’ve had a really busy week and so it sucked to be closed today,” he said.
The financial impact is huge, Ekert explained.
“That affects making the rent this month, paying my bills.
“It’s really stressful. December was rough. It’s Christmas, it’s slow, the details slow down, the average daily car washes slow down. Then to have a really nice warm week and to be closed until Sunday is tough. I’ve got employees to pay and bills.”
Cartmell said a bit of warning and a quick resolution to the water issue would be a relief to those businesses.
“The circumstances could not be worse for people like those that operate car washes. Laundromats are another one. And that’s not just the people who own the laundromats, but the people that use the laundromats. If you don’t have the ability to do your laundry, that can be a problem too.”
A spokesperson for EPCOR said the company has been in contact with Coun. Cartmell and the City Clerk’s office, and filed a request that an agenda item be added to the March utility committee meeting.
“EPCOR will be conducting a post-incident review and will provide a more detailed update to utility committee on the incident, the demand management measures, and resiliency planning.
“EPCOR’s teams remain focused on safely implementing timely repairs to the electrical systems at the E.L. Smith Water Treatment Plant and returning the water system to full capacity.”
Under the non-essential water ban, EPCOR is asking people to:
- Defer laundry or large uses of water such as filling hot tubs
- Use a small amount of dishes and wash them as efficiently as possible
- Take short showers rather than baths
- Don’t run the water when brushing your teeth
- Discontinue flooding backyard ice rinks.
The Oilers Entertainment Group said it’s eliminating non-essential water use in Rogers Place.
“Limited ice resurfacing at Rogers Place will continue only as needed, and thankfully the current non-essential water ban comes during a time where the Oilers are on a break and there are minimal spectator events,” said Stu Ballantyne, president and chief operating officer of Rogers Place and ICE District.
EPCOR recognizes this is difficult for many businesses and it thanked people their help reducing water use.
“This is a collective effort,” Bonneville said. “We want to thank you all for that.”
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