Medicine Hat, AB – Although winter may seem like a distant memory, the city is now starting to look at the final bill the season left them with.
One of the biggest issues was frozen pipes.
Between thawing and repairing, dig-ups to expose some pipes, repairs, and new equipment the city spent about $416,000
With temperatures about 20 degrees colder then average in February, the city responded to more than double the amount of frozen pipes than last year.
The city’s manager of field operations, Brian Graham, say that they received about 1,000 calls from residents and responded to 336 frozen water service lines.
Graham says they’ve been able to been able to make this a learning experience.
“We’ve actually increased our training for staff. We have frozen services every year, but this year it was 10-fold increase in what we usually have.” He said. “So we’ve actually trained up more staff and we’ve purchased some additional thawing machines. So if this happens again to this extreme in the future we’re far better prepared now.”
Graham adds that there is still some asphalt repairs to be completed.
