IQALUIT
Last week's water shutdown in the capital city revealed much larger problems in Iqaluit's infrastructure than were known before.

Operations superintendent Joseph Brown, left, analyzes a water leak site in Iqaluit with Richard Sparham, project officer, public works and engineering. What started as a simple leaked revealed cracked, frozen pipes and deeper issues in the city's utilidor system. - Stewart Burnett/NNSL photo

A leak which began on July 27 led to a large portion of the city's core being without water, a boil water advisory enacted and a chain of discoveries - and ensuing repair jobs - by the public works team.

An improperly capped service line beside the location of the city's new 24-plex caused the original leak. Public works dealt with that and got the water back on after a few days, but then the line started leaking again.

"What we found when we dug was that the whole main line in that section was cracked in several places from freezing," said Matthew Hamp, director of public works.

Pipes in the North are not supposed to freeze, and water is supposed to be continually moving through the utilidor system.

Residents and businesses in the city noticed repeated public service announcements about the shutdown from the city. These often came in the morning and aimed to have the water back on later in the afternoon, which would be followed by a new announcement later saying the team was still working on it.

Some confusion sprang across the city, with residents needing trucked water and businesses having to work around the issue, if they could at all.

"When we went to cap what we thought was the secondary leak, put everything back together, turn the water back on, another leak sprung up," said Hamp.

"This was happening all down the line. We would address a leak and then another one would spring up. We had to keep excavating down the line and each time we excavated we found more of these issues, these cracks."

Water was officially switched back on Aug. 12 when Hamp's team managed to install a new fix. For that, workers had to pull the entire line off back to the hydrant and cap it at the hydrant. To make matters harder, the infrastructure was so outdated that custom pieces had to be fabricated to put a cap on the line.

"I know people were frustrated, but each time we were actually building these things, putting them on the end and trying to make it work in the absence of having the actual manufactured piece that would go on it, because there's no supply in town for them," said Hamp.

At press time, the new cap seemed to be holding.

But the public works department has a lot of work to do now.

"We're looking into the root cause of (the freezing)," said Hamp. "But regardless, that section still has to be replaced in order to restore that circulation pattern so that we don't see another freeze happen and a worse one in the future."

That's work the department will have to undertake this year before winter.

The costs to the city for labour and materials in last week's repair were in excess of $40,000, estimated Hamp.

To replace the frozen section, he is estimating that repair bill at about $100,000.

"We're just glad that it's over, as I'm sure everybody else is, but we have a lot of work ahead of us in addressing the more longer-term issue of this frozen pipe," said Hamp. "There's more digging in the future but hopefully we don't have to have such a long shutdown."

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