(File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Charlene Tebbutt

broken water lines

City dealing with water line breaks following extreme cold

Mar 16, 2019 | 10:00 AM

The extreme cold that lingered over much of the winter is causing infrastructure problems for local city crews despite the warmer weather of late.

The City of Prince Albert issued a notice to residents Friday about a higher number of water main breaks around the city due to the unprecedented deep frost underground. The city says the cold has caused the frost to reach lower than usual, about nine feet down, and is affecting water mains and pipes.

Typical frost depths are between four and six feet.

The city’s operations manager said frost depths are usually deeper under streets that experience heavier traffic flow, but vary across the city. Mohommad Kraishan said the city has been dealing with broken pipes, frozen catch basins and frozen service lines for about three weeks and has already responded to 15 water main breaks this year alone.

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The warmer days the city has seen this week don’t affect what’s underground, Kraishan added.

“The frost under the ground, it’s not affected by the warm weather,” he said. “We’ll have to have a good period of warm weather in order for the frost to disappear from the ground.”

Older, cast iron pipes are more susceptible to water main breaks than the more modern design using PVC, Kraishan added.

“We have been receiving an increased number of frozen service lines [and] we are aware of all these frozen lines and we are aware of any water main break that happens and we do have them on a list and we are repairing them,” he said.

Residents who experience a water line break and are without water can contact the city, or their after-hours line. Kraishan said crews are working longer hours to repair broken or damaged lines.

“As the weather stays warm, we will see a change, but it’s not going to be an instant change,” Kraishan added. It’s going to take time, probably a month or two.”

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Charlene.tebbutt@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @CharleneTebbutt