This sinkhole on Morin Street on March 14th, 2015 was caused partially due to one of the many water main breaks that occurred over the past two months in North Bay. PHOTO BY CHRIS DAWSON.
City Crews are enjoying a bit of a break after what has been an unusually busy season for water main breaks in North Bay.
The cold weather pushed frost down almost twice as deep as normal this winter.
Those frost levels wreaked havoc on water mains across the city.
“We are still out trying to thaw people who are on temp lines, fortunately all homes now have water,” stated Shawn Remillard, the City of North Bay Operations Manager of Water and Wastewater.
“It’s been a week or two since we’ve got everybody water but we do have a little more than 100 still on temp service out of 376 total calls so we are doing fairly well.”
Remillard says the gradual thaw the region is experiencing is good news for area water mains.
“The nights are still below zero and when we get those cooler nights and thawing during the day it allows the ditches, the catch basins, our storm system to sort of catch up, so its definitely been beneficial the way that our temperature has dropped below zero at night,” he said.
However, Remillard realizes that a few days of temperatures in the double digits in early April, could create more concerns as the frost tries to leave the ground.
“Hopefully after Easter the frost starts coming out of the ground,” he said.
“We did excavate in front of St. Joseph-Scollard Hall over the weekend and the supervisor on-call did indicate to me Monday morning that the frost is softening up at the surface so we are seeing evidence that the frost is trying to leave the ground and hopefully the water main breaks become non existent, or close to non-existent.”
