INUVIK - The Town of Inuvik is conducting an independent audit into November's utilidor system freeze-up that left 11 homes and one church without running water for from two to nine days.

Rick Campbell, Inuvik's director of public services, is pictured with a map of the town's utilidor system. - Aaron Beswick/NNSL photo

"We're going to look at our procedures and see if we could have done anything that would have prevented this from happening," said Rick Campbell, the town's director of public services.

The utilidor section which froze, hemmed in by Mackenzie Road and Kingminya Road, Union Street and Reliance Street, was built in 1970.

As a result of the utilidor replacement program - on which the town spends approximately $1.5 million annually to replace old sections - a line that keeps warm water circulating was not yet hooked back up and a small section of water pipe froze.

"We had the contractor working on the replacement speed up and got this circulation line installed,"said Campbell. "We started to get flow and the problem looked solved."

But a week later, on Nov. 15, Campbell's phone rang again - water wasn't running to residents in the same area.

"We weren't sure why."

So workers were sent with a steamer to heat up the pipes and get water flowing again. That night the temperature dipped to -23 C (according to Environment Canada) and the town's steamer failed. Over the coming hours and days, steamers belonging to four different contractors in Inuvik were tried and failed. By the time a steamer was fixed to thaw the pipe, a 250-foot section of the cast cement pipe had split.

Caps were placed at both ends of the split pipe, equipment was installed to keep warm water flowing and the split waterline was replaced. Throughout the ordeal the town delivered water to the 11 affected residences and offered the residents transportation to the Midnight Sun Complex for the use of showers. The sewer line, meanwhile, did not freeze.

"It's a unique system that has to operate in extreme conditions," said Campbell.

The utilidor system was one of Inuvik's first construction projects in 1958. Originally the system also carried super-heated steam from a centralized steam plant to heat buildings on the town's east end.

"Inuvik was a government town and the majority of the buildings were government so having a centralized heating system made sense," said Campbell. "The west end, meanwhile, had very few services - honey buckets and trucked water."

The concept of a utilidor system was largely unproven when it came to Inuvik, and was installed because the ice-rich ground could be melted by heat given off by water and sewer pipes, causing slumping along the sewer lines.

"That would be a problem - (stuff) only flows downhill," said Campbell.

As the town grew, the system expanded into the east end of town. By 1980 people were switching to home-based heat generation and the town began removing the steam piping. That hot steam had served a dual purpose - heating homes and keeping the utilidor system from freezing.

To compensate, the town heats the water it draws from the Mackenzie River in the winter to 8 to 10 C.

November's freeze-up happened in the shoulder season, while the town was still drawing from its summer water supply at Hidden Lake. There's a boiler at that water treatment plant, but it's less capable than the one which heats water coming from the Mackenzie.

The town has budgeted to add $250,000 this year to the $500,000 saved so far towards a new water treatment plant projected to cost $11 million. As well, the town's ongoing replacement of the utilidor system, which began in earnest in 2000 at a rate of about one block per year, is less than half complete.

"After the trials and tribulations with the old system, the spiral-wrap steel-jacket insulated pipes on steel pilings is better," said Campbell. "It has adjustable hangers so we can raise and lower it and everything is top of the line. It's designed to last at least a hundred years."

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