Mayor Pond explains Tuesday night water issue to CBC Vancouver as "Armageddon like"

Tuesday night's work on the water system on the east side seemingly was much more dire than the City led on with their notices on Tuesday and the Boil Order Notice of Wednesday morning.

The real story of the Battle for the Montreal Circle Reservoir was delivered by Mayor Herb Pond to the CBC Vancouver news desk, with reporter Karin Larsen putting it all together for the CBC's readers yesterday.

Water main crisis puts Prince Rupert, BC under boil water notice 

While the headline itself is not much different than what local media had to tell us on Wednesday, not too far into CBC Vancouver piece, we get to the most alarming of the many quotes from Mayor Pond that explained how close the city seemingly came to a worst case scenario for its water supply:

"The event that we feared is that we would lose water in our reservoir and that would create a vacuum that would perhaps cause kilometres of our water main to actually collapse on itself. We came within minutes of that last night,"

That is decidedly not the vibe the City of Prince Rupert was sharing as the Tuesday night work went on, the short advisories to the work as it was taking place was something which we followed with a story here. 

Those dispatches did suggest concern, but no sense of emergency.

Likely  a decision taken so as to not put out a sense of panic for the community. 

As those updates from the city were being released through the evening, out in social media and through other forms of information sharing, videos were making note of the flowing volume  of water down the streets  of the Crestview area and the impact on homes which included flooded basements.

The BOIL WATER NOTICE of Wednesday, on whatever civic platform you looked at it from including the City of Prince Ruper website,  likewise offered no sense of the drama of the night, or the peril to the water supply of the incident.

Nor did they provide any update on the scope of the work taken on or the resulting damage from the incident .

As for Mayor Pond's own Social Media stream, (which has a link to the August video presentation towards the topic) there's no mention at all of the Tuesday incident or the concerning details of which he shared with the CBC's provincial news desk in Vancouver.

Ms. Larsen seems to have the scoop on the concerning situation, none of the local media stories that followed have indicated the sense of urgency that the CBC story conveyed as to the frantic work of civic workers to head off a calamity.

Tuesday's incident does leave more than a few questions unanswered, the most important one ... what the cause for the original failure was, said to be a valve issue at the reservoir, that then started the cascading failures across a larger area beyond the Crestview neighbourhood. 

The area of the Montreal Circle reservoir is the work site that began all of the City's attention to water infrastructure issues almost one year ago during the State of Local Emergency of that time. 

It's a site that has been a constant construction area ever since.  

So one might imagine that most, if not all of the infrastructure in place is newly installed pipe and valves ... so how a failure such as Tuesday's could take place to start the chain of events should be the first item of business for the city when it comes to information sharing.

In the comments to the CBC story a few interesting observations are made as to what may have caused the the Prince Rupert incident, the term water hammer getting some significant mentions. 

A quick google search shares word that a Water Hammer is described as the result of a pressure surge, or high pressure shockwave that propagates through a pipping system.

Now that's all speculation from the contributors to a news story, so take it with some grains of salt 

But without any official comment, it makes as much sense as anything else, pending further details through official civic channels.

Not having a full overview available for the public on Wednesday is another missed opportunity for the Mayor, Council and City Staff in being forthcoming on the issue of the water infrastructure. 

Residents shouldn't have to stumble upon stories from Vancouver news sources to learn of a concerning moment for the city's continued work to secure its water system.

The City's infrastructure was one of the main themes from the most recent City Council session, talking points for many of the council members and the Mayor related to their time at the UBCM convention.  

Though at times, the tone  of the last ten minutes of the Council session was one of  frustration that the community somehow still  isn't fully informed on the issues.

This recent incident and the lack of  information shared towards it however,  doesn't serve to back up the Council view as to how they are keeping the community fully informed.

All credit should go to the civic workers and the contractors  on Tuesday who once again have managed to hold it all together for us. They truly seem like the last line of defence for the community on a day to day basis.

Beyond an explanation towards the events of Tuesday, there is a very large need for a fulsome overview for the public of where the City is at in its work and how it plans to address the upcoming cold weather season, which could bring a new cycle of imploding water lines across the community.  

As well, City Council may want to share what it has in mind towards some kind of back up plan, should the delays continue when it comes to the often mentioned and highly anticipated Federal funding application for 82 million dollars in infrastructure funding.

At the time of Mayor Pond's recent Chamber of Commerce Breakfast meeting, Veronika Stewart, the City's Manager of Communications, Engagement and Social Development indicated that some thought was being given to a community forum in the near future.

Hopefully, that community forum plan moves ahead,  (outside of the recently announced Budget consultation  forum) with a date announced soon towards a dedicated infrastructure forum.  

Though, considering the importance and interest in the water issues for the community,  the city may need a fairly large room to host it and should probably record the event so residents can reference it often as the water projects move forward.

One final note from the CBC Story, that related to how long we may be on a BOIL WATER NOTICE and what comes after it, that once again from Mayor Pond for the Vancouver news desk.

"That'll probably last for a few days while things settle down," said Pond. "When the water clarifies, then we'll go back to the boil-water advisory, which is the state we're going to be living in for years."

You can review the evolution of the work on the city's infrastructure from  our archive page here.