Advertisement

City of Lethbridge prepares for another cold winter

Click to play video: 'City of Lethbridge prepares for another cold winter'
City of Lethbridge prepares for another cold winter
With cold winter temperatures just getting started, we reached out to the city to find out how they're doing so far in terms of maintaining infrastructure during the coldest months of the year. Taz Dhaliwal reports – Jan 10, 2020

With cold winter temperatures just getting started, Global News reached out to the City of Lethbridge to find out how infrastructure maintenance is going during the coldest months of the year.

Last year, Lethbridge experienced one of the coldest winters in recent memory. The city said that last February alone, Lethbridge experienced as many water main breaks as it did in all of 2018.

“The cold weather was a contributing factor to the high number of water main breaks,” said Leanne Lammertsen, the city’s water and wastewater operations manager.

“The frost was deep, the water coming from the river was cold — all these things just added up.”

Lammertsen said a majority of the water main breaks happen with cast iron pipes, which currently make up about 10 per cent of the city’s water mains.

Story continues below advertisement

The city is working towards reducing that number until all cast iron water pipes have been replaced.

“Right now, we do not have any active water main breaks today,” Lammertsen said. “This year has sort of been a standard year — [the water main breaks] come in maybe every one or two weeks.”

However, she added that Lethbridge is getting into the time of year when water mains are prone to breaking.

Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.

Get daily National news

Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Lammertsen also said the city is prepared to tackle any maintenance issues that may come up.

The city has crews which are available 24/7 to respond to these situations.

“We encourage residents — if they see water coming out of the ground and it’s -15 C [and] if the water’s not frozen — [to] call 311 so that we can investigate the situation, because often times that is how we find out about water main breaks,” Lammertsen stated.
Story continues below advertisement

When it comes to resources and staff, the city said it has just as many maintenance crews working in the winter as during summer.

“We run four crews pretty much all year round [and] we’re able to respond to anything from water main breaks to blocked sewers, leaky valves — this what we’re doing right here, right now,” said Terry Elliott, a foreman of a maintenance crew with the city.

Elliott said that with the reduction of cast iron water main pipes, the city expects to see less breaks as the old infrastructure gets replaced.

 

Sponsored content

AdChoices