By Andrew de Souza

$560,000 to fix 15th Street water main

Jun 29, 2011 | 6:21 AM

City staff have been given the green light to fix a broken water main that frustrated workers with continual breakages a few weeks ago.

On Monday, council learned it would cost about $560,000 to replace approximately 300 metres of pipe on 15th Street West between Second and Third Avenues.

The cast iron pipe was originally installed in 1900 and has deteriorated considerably since. An accident damaged a fire hydrant on the line and when crews repaired it, it caused the pipe to burst.

As crews repaired it, the pipe continued to collapse due to its age and fragility.

Not only did council give pre-budget approval to the project, they also gave crews permission to begin work immediately. According to director of public works Colin Innes, crews would begin as soon as they were finished repaving Second Avenue West.

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Pipe realities come to forefront

With so much frustration and such a high cost, councillors were concerned about the state of other pipelines in the city.

Councillors asked why the pipes were in the ground so long if they could possibly fail.

City manager Robert Cotterill said that with cast iron pipes they could function for years past their expected life and tearing them up was a waste of money.

“The problem with corrosion with cast iron is that once it’s reached the level of the carbonization that’s occurring, it’s finished, but it can stay in that state for another 20 years,” he said. “But if you get some disruption — a pressure change, whatever — you can get failures.

“We’ve got other areas in the city where we might get five years, we might get ten years, we might get ten minutes, we cannot know but you wouldn’t want to start digging it up because it may get major failures.”

Councillor Lee Atkinson asked if they city was working on any kind of plan to address the possibility of failure.

There is a basic plan, Innes said. He said the city identified five areas that could be replaced, but that it would cost more than $15 million to replace.

He echoed Cotterill’s words that the pipes could last, but added that work would eventually needed to be done.

“We could wind up seeing performances of these pipes for another five years, another ten years, or it could fail right away,” he said.

“We don’t believe that we’re going to have imminent failures everywhere, but at the same time, there is considerable infrastructure backlog and we will see more of this as time goes one.”

adesouza@panow.com