Residents along Bowness Road NW have been left without water for nearly a week, Margot Rubin reports.
A homeowner in Bowness has grown so frustrated with water problems in her community that she says she’s looking to move.
Myranda Lepard says her water has been off due to a pipe break along Bowness Road near 66 Street NW on Sunday — she says it’s the fifth or sixth time its happened in that last year-and-a-half.
“It’s been really frustrating,” she says. “Luckily I have a gym membership and I’ve just been going (there) to use the showers. You don’t realize who much you use water until you don’t have it.”
She says she’s had days where she needed to haul buckets of water down an icy hill and worries about seniors in the area who are not as able as she is.
“The first few days were fine, but now it’s almost been a week of hauling water,” she says.
The City of Calgary has water trucks in the community for residents and says crews are working 15-hours a day to fix it.
CityNews spoke with the city’s manager of drinking water distribution who acknowledges the issues have been a significant inconvenience for those in the area.
“We had a break on this street earlier in the week, we repaired that one and while we were putting that back in service another break happened a few houses down, which is why they’re out of water again,” says Chris Huston. “It’s not normal, we recognize that, it’s also a huge inconvenience for all those residences.”
He says the city usually has breaks fixed in a few days, but this one has been really hard to find.
“Once we find it, repairs are usually relatively quick,” he says. “Hopefully we can find it (Friday) and get the water back on so they’re not at it all weekend.”
City officials are still trying to determine what caused the break. That particular pipe was installed in 1959 and is nearing the end of its estimated 75-year lifespan.
Huston says city staff at the emergency water trucks are in the neighbourhood to help ensure seniors get what they need.
Bowness was the hardest hit community last summer when the Bearspaw South feeder main ruptured along 16 Avenue NW, plunging Calgary into strict outdoor restrictions for most of the summer.
An investigation determined there were multiple factors that contributed to the major break in June.
Lepard, who owns a townhouse, is so tired of the trouble she’s considered moving away from the area.
“I’ve looked around,” she says. “This is getting ridiculous.”
She says water shutoffs and infrastructure failures have been an ongoing problem in the area since high-density developments began. The recent problem spot is the same one that was dug up recently to connect a new building to the system, she says.