The public works department of the City of Thompson has been hard at work this summer fixing water main breaks and street sweeping. Wayne Koversky, director of public works and operations, submitted a memo to city manager Randy Patrick that was discussed at city council's Aug. 10 meeting.
Koversky says street sweeping operations were completed once for the entire city in one month, and will be continuing throughout the summer. Three sewer and water personnel attended a week-long course in Winnipeg on waste water operation and the public works department's asphalt plant is up and running and ready to assist in excavation and pothole repairs. The city's mechanical department was able to deal with 54 various repairs to units and four miscellaneous jobs, and sewer and water crews were able to complete and repair 16 excavations.
Koversky says there has been about 50 water breaks throughout the City of Thompson in the months of June, July and into August, and says he thinks its fair to assume that Thompson deals with the most water main breaks per capita in all of Western Canada.
"I've talked to a few municipalities. The Pas phoned me - they had an unusual winter with 40 water breaks," Koversky says. "Calgary four years ago did 1,200 water main break repairs a year, and we did 10 per cent of that."
According to Koversky, one of the reasons Thompson has so many water main breaks is because of the unusual weather the city has seen in the last 10 or so years that has caused pipes to shift.
"The permafrost plays havoc with our infrastructure Now we have extreme heat, and the frost doesn't like the heat, so it goes further down [in the ground] and puts pressure on the soil and other areas of the pipes, which causes shifting, and shifting causes clean breaks," he explains. "What really did us in this year is we had that five weeks of no snow and frost penetrated further down, so we had eight feet of solid ice before we hit defrosted soil. That solid ice has been sinking down, retreating from the heat, so that kind of poses some dangers with us."
Koversky says there is also electrolysis issues with water in the City of Thompson, noting what happens is an electric current goes through the water, swirls and naturally drills holes from the inside of pipes to the outside. He also says the popes, which have been in the ground for 50 years, are getting old in some places. He says where there is a need city crews will actually put new pipes in instead of just repairing the old ones.
Koversky says that this year, water main breaks were distributed fairly evenly throughout the city and didn't show up more often in one particular subdivision. He also says that compared to some other communities he's been in touch with, such as Killarney, Man., where crews usually take a week to fix water main breaks, city crews in Thompson usually fix them in a day.
