City's Operations Director to provide blueprint ahead for water infrastructure plans

If you're in an area in red, you have a more likely chance of seeing some
waterline work sooner than those in the blue areas
(map from City of PR report)

"Though the official Local State of Emergency has technically ended in the eyes of the Federal and Provincial Governments, it has not with the City of Prince Rupert. The City Staff operate in this state daily, triaging several water leaks, mitigating loss of potable water to homes, and constantly fettling with the water supply to ensure the reservoir is at a safe and reasonable operating capacity every day." -- A passage from a report for council tonight, related to the city's plans for water infrastructure replacement

Members of Prince Rupert City Council are set to receive a range of reports at tonight's Council Session, one of which will serve to offer up a look at how the City plans to approach the challenging situation of the city's water delivery system.

The Report from Director of Operations Richard Pucci,  holds to the city's themes on how PILT and Tax Caps are unfair and make for revenue challenges while also recounting some past history when it comes to how the water system had been left in neglect for many years.

In addition, in the past, there was a limited appetite from previous Councils to further raise taxes to renew infrastructure, due to the community’s hard economic times. 

To survive that time, the Council made severe cuts (by up to 75% in some cases) to staff and operational spending and those cuts are still being felt today. 

The City now responds to at least four emergency water breaks per week, a record level, and breaks on the primary supply line which have rendered the City hours away from losing water to the entire community.

The Report from Director Pucci, will also chart some of the steps planned to address a 600 million dollar plus infrastructure deficit.

To reinforce the challenges, Mr. Pucci notes of the ongoing work dealing with water issues since the State of Local Emergency was ended prior to Christmas.

Since calling the Local State of Emergency, the City experienced at least 9 additional water main breaks, and 15 city-owned service breaks – bringing our annual total for water main breaks to over 30, up from 12 in 2021 - our highest ever recorded.

The main thrust of the three pages, plans for a three year critical replacement strategy, the most vulnerable areas identified through a recent consultants replacement strategy project.

The priority projects consist of approximately 26 kilometers of water mains that are a combination of high risk of failure and high likelihood of failure infrastructure. 

The City took the priority projects and provided them to professional construction estimators to achieve real project costs associated with the works. 

The cost provided was $130 million with the provision that construction costs are currently in flux and are still trending upward due to various factors.

Should the plans for the work required move forward, Mr. Pucci notes it will be messy, noisy and cause for some disruption for residents in many areas of the city.

Further, the Staff realizes that this major work program will hit all households and be messy, loud, distracting, disruptive, and disturbing. However, we will do our best to communicate all attributes of the program with the public and know that as a community we will make it through and be better for it.

The full report, which is available from the City's Agenda package, can be reviewed below:

click above to enlarge

City Council members will have opportunity to ask questions, or make comments on the report as part of tonight's session.

As well, as it's part of the Agenda for the night, the public can read up on the plans and also make comment towards the document, that as part of the public comment period that comes at the start of the Council session.

More notes related to Civic Operations can be reviewed here, while Major Projects themes are explored here.

A wider overview of tonight's Council Session is available from our Council Preview.