LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON
A water main along Mackenzie Drive that broke after being frozen last winter is due to be repaired in the next two weeks.

Road closure signs mark a water main break in front of the Environment and Natural Resources office in Fort Simpson. - April Hudson/NNSL photo

The main, which is in front of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources office in Fort Simpson, is one of a few broken mains the village has dealt with this year.

Mitch Gast, Fort Simpson's waste water treatment centre operator, said frozen mains have become an increasing problem as frost penetrates increasingly deeper than normal.

"We won't know 100 per cent until we dig it up, but we've had a couple frozen main issues last winter," Gast said.

Digging was scheduled to begin Aug. 18.

Village SAO Beth Jumbo said the digging will take place at the same location as a dig earlier this summer, which had been done to repair broken sewer and water services.

The broken main is the last on a list of mains that had to be repaired this summer.

At the end of July, the village dug up 100 Street by Liidlii Kue First Nation's band office to get at another frozen main. Gast said when the main was unearthed, the elbow was broken.

"We dug the elbow up and we found the pipe shattered. That was a frost issue," he said.

"It was frozen back toward the Northern store, probably just into the intersection."

Currently, the southeast end of 100 street is fed from three different areas. A main break near the village office last winter forced Gast's team to shut all three feeds down at 40 below, causing water to stop and mains to freeze.

That led to the majority of the problems the village has been experiencing this

summer.

"We had to shut it down to repair the break. When we turned it back on, there was no water flow ... (Frozen mains) are a terrible thing," he said.

"If you have a shutoff ... to repair a main break, not only does the water shut off in the mains but you're not feeding the homes, so circ pumps burn out. If you have to shut a main down for two days, sometimes it's really bad and you start freezing up 20 services in town.

We froze those to repair our main and we have to re-thaw those services."

Likewise, Gast said a large main freeze in the winter of 2013-14 could not be repaired until late August and into early September last year.

"Why didn't we repair that in June? It was still frozen. It didn't thaw out until the middle of August," he said. "The frost has been penetrating a lot deeper in the past few years."

The water main by the GNWT office marks one of the last anticipated repairs of the season, now that the frost has thawed enough for workers to access it.

"It takes that long for the heat to get into the ground. Every time we dig, we get down to about eight feet and we get into frost again," Gast said.

"We're not in permafrost. This is just winter frost."

Mayor Sean Whelly said after the meeting that with the village's recent purchase of a gravel sanding truck, winter crews should be able to reduce the levels of frost penetration by leaving more hard-packed snow on the roads.

"That gives us a chance to do other things, as well, instead of scraping (roads) down to the surface all the time," he said.

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