Ferguson street was closed recently as city crews worked on a frozen water line. It's a problem across the city due to the amount of frost in the ground. PHOTO BY CHRIS DAWSON.
Al McDonald’s social media post about the frozen water line problem says it all.
“We have 159 frozen water lines, (24 called in Monday and 7 this morning) 56 lines repaired, we had 2 more water main breaks,” McDonald stated via Facebook on Wednesday afternoon.
“City crews are doing everything they can. I spoke with other Mayor's in the North and they are facing the same challenges. Even if it starts to get mild, the frost will still go deeper.”
Those numbers show that frozen water lines have become a major problem this winter. Shawn Remillard, the Operations Manager of Water and Waste water for the City of North Bay says you can blame Mother Nature.
“The frost just seems to drive down deeper, when you get the over -25 weather you notice the frost depth significantly increases overnight,” said Remilliard.
In some areas Remillard says the frost level is almost double the normal levels.
“Typically over the past 10 years you will see four to five feet of frost, that is sort of average, but in the past couple of years we’ve seen 6 and again this year 7 feet, a little over 7 feet in some areas,” he said.
To add to the problem, the hard frozen ground causes challenges for city crews to even get to some of the breaks.
“The ground is as hard as cement. We use hydraulic breakers on backhoes that bust up the frost into manageable sized chunks and then the excavator operator moves those chunks, so its a very lengthy process to dig down to these frozen or broken water mains,” he said.
Remillard says the problem is worse in older parts of the city where the water lines are not buried as deep underground as other lines are in new parts of the city.
Remillard adds the key to avoid the freezing is to run your water constantly.
“What we are telling home owners now--- those who experienced frozen water in the past, and we are getting others that haven’t experienced it in the past,” he said.
“We are asking them to run their water at a constant flow, the rule of thumb is the size of a pencil. That is usually enough to not freeze the line.”
