Bowness residents demand more information about repairs to feeder main

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When Christina Pilarski heard the saga around the city’s repaired feeder main wasn’t yet over, and another fix of the enfeebled pipe would probably unfold outside her home in Bowness, she was camping in Kananaskis.

Her phone trembled with texts from her neighbours on a group chat as they pieced together what they knew about the upcoming repairs. In less than three weeks, city workers would descend on her neighbourhood and begin digging up its roads.

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The mood turned to dread as Pilarski and her neighbours reckoned with a replay of the recent major inconvenience that had taken the form of an emergency and grabbed national headlines. But what irked them the most was a lack of clarity, even as Mayor Jyoti Gondek stressed her desire for the city to communicate more effectively this time.

“We were caught pretty flat-footed on June 5 when this pipe broke,” Gondek told reporters Friday. “We were not as quick at getting the information out to the public as we needed to be, and I made a commitment to you that we would get better at that.”

The city said it found 16 “weak spots” along the feeder main, similar to the five “hot spots” that stretched the pipe’s restoration into July. Most of the repairs, which are to run 24/7 from Aug. 26 to Sept. 23, will be undertaken along a strip of 33rd Avenue N.W. and nearby Parkdale Boulevard. But the information is preliminary and subject to change, said the city’s general manager, Michael Thompson.

The number of vulnerabilities and their precise location haven’t been confirmed yet because the city is still trying to parse the results from an analysis by a “high-tech” pipe diver — a tool that scans the length of the 10.4-kilometre feeder main for anomalies.

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“So typically, (it) would take months to get the data back from the pipe diver inspection, to analyze it and to come up with a plan,” Thompson told reporters Friday.

“We’ve been turning that information around within weeks, and so as soon as we started to realize that there were some significant issues along 33rd Avenue, we came out to let Calgarians know about that — we’re still finalizing the analysis of that information.”

Meanwhile, throughout the week, city officials have been door-knocking in neighbourhoods in Bowness — including Pilarski’s, which sits on the block of 33rd Avenue and 83rd Street — distributing letters, informing them about the upcoming repairs.

A letter, dated Aug. 7, states the urgency of the work. While the Bearspaw south feeder main is being fixed, the city would have to rely on the Glenmore Treatment Plant, which draws its supply from the Elbow River. The water flow is heavier in the summer due to snow melt and rainfall, and the city aims to repair the pipe so it can let the reservoir fill before its levels fall in the winter.

The letter also conveys what is expected of the residents: to comply with Stage 4 restrictions and curb their indoor water use by 25 per cent: by taking three-minute showers, skipping flushes where possible and only running full loads of laundry and dishes.

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But missing from the letter is all that Pilarski wanted to know: How deep would they dig the roads outside their houses? Bereft of backyard access, would they be able to enter their homes? What would the noise levels be? What would 24/7 repairs look like?

With only two more weeks to go, residents are filling the gaps with speculation.

“We’re all planning for the worst-case scenario,” Pilarski said.

She isn’t alone in her sentiments. Many residents in Bowness share such concerns and have been expressing their grievances to Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp.

Sharp, who has interacted with nearly 50 residents acting as informal representatives for their neighbours, confirmed that the frustration has been growing as people speculate the ramifications of the repairs.

She also said she has been disappointed with the city’s communication strategy.

“If we were going to go out and say this to those residents on this community on the street, we should have been prepared and armed with all the information — I feel like we’ve given these folks PTSD, so I’m a little disappointed.”

“I actually had mentioned to administration and some other members of council, saying, ‘I feel like we’re going out too soon.’”

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Businesses in the neighbourhood, too, are staring at the uncertainty of what this new development might herald.

“There probably needs to be more communication on what exactly is going to be happening,” said Melba Seto, owner of the Bowness Soapworks and an advocate for businesses in the community.

The initial rupture to the feeder main drastically cut footfall as traffic was diverted from 16th Ave to Bowness Road. “At first you think ‘Great, this is going to be more exposure.’ But you’re stuck in traffic. The last thing you want to do is try to find parking and go shopping,” Seto said.

Seto said businesses in the community, which are small and independent, are still emerging from the incident. “Their morale is down. When you say, how are things, you know, a lot of people are saying like, ‘It’s not looking good, things are slow.’”

Apart from additional information on how the work would affect them, she said, the city should also promote businesses in the community to make up for the losses they suffer.

“The city needs to step up and say, ‘If you shop at this place, we’re going to give you this kind of perk or discount,’ but the city needs to pay for that — not the small businesses.”

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The uncertainty has Pilarski recalling an orange fence outside her home. The enclosure surrounds a manhole flanked by a machine that, one resident ventured, is an acoustic monitoring device. Pilarski said the fences were in place before the initial feeder main break. She and her husband initially dialled 311, asking the city about the contraption — to no avail.

“Clearly, it was monitoring something,” Pilarski said.

When the feeder main initially broke, whistling sounds rang from the enclosure. Pilarski’s husband called 311, and “they basically said, ‘Oh yes, it has something to do with the water main break.’”

“Forty-eight hours later, someone from the city did come and do something, and the whistling stopped.”

Pilarski, who runs a public relations and marketing firm, still doesn’t know what happened.

She harkens back to the incident as a metaphor for the city missing its mark in allaying the concerns of its residents.

“If a government is unveiling a plan, they need to be thinking about every question that could possibly come at them, so that they’re giving residents confidence in what they’re going to be doing, and building trust,” she said.

“At this point to let us know, ‘OK, well, maybe for a month you won’t have access, maybe for a month you won’t have this,’ doesn’t really help us plan.”

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