By Taylor Chartrand

City sees ‘unprecedented amount of frozen water services’

Mar 11, 2019 | 3:44 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Even with the temperatures warming up, the City of Medicine Hat continues to deal with frozen water services throughout the City.

“Since February 1st, we’ve seen an unprecedented amount of frozen water services across the City,” explained Environmental Utilities General Manager, Brian Murphy. “We’ve never seen anything like this and it’s effecting quite a few home owners.”

Murphy says crews have been working diligently to get the water restored.

“There’s no way to provide a timeline on when we will be getting to residents. We have homes that have been without water for up to 72 hours. We will supply water to effected residents as best we can, but we’re on limited supplies. We’re managing the cue as best we can, but it’s an evolving situation.”

At this time last year, the City of Medicine Hat had roughly 70 calls out for frozen water services. 

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Now, Murphy says they’ve received over 230.

“All we can attribute it to is the extreme, prolonged cold that we’ve all experienced this past month.” 

Murphy speculates that the frost levels are still roughly 9-10 feet deep, which is also playing a factor in this situation.

“We’re putting every resource we have out there and we’re putting ourselves in a position to sustain this response because we expect it could be a week or two before the frost comes enough out of the ground.”

Murphy says the issues are predominantly in older homes and neighborhoods, but that’s no guarantee other homes and buildings won’t be effected.

“We’re asking residents, particularly in older homes and older communities, to run a cold water tap continuously for the next couple of weeks. You want to run that water at a pencil width continually and that is the best action to prevent your water service from potentially freezing.”

The City has estimated that running your tap will have a fairly minimal cost of about $1 per day.

“You don’t need the tap running while you’re performing household activities like laundry or showers or anything, but any time you’re heading out for awhile, it’s not worth the risk. That is so much better than having to wait for us to come and assist.”

Murphy recommends that before you leave the house unattended with the taps running, you take some preventative measures.

“There’s certainly a risk with leaving the tap running and that’s the home owners responsibility to look after. The only recommendation is to try it while you’re at home to make sure the drain is clear and the water is running smoothly.”

To try and alleviate some of the situation, the City of Medicine Hat has reached out to several different municipalities

“We’re well resourced as best we can, but we’ve reached out to other communities requesting additional equipment. What we’re finding, is every community in Alberta and Saskatchewan is facing the same challenge that we’re having right now and our sense is that we’re responding to this quite well.”