The City of Yellowknife says it’s no longer actively considering whether to stop maintaining the surface water lines that give Old Town residents access to mains water each summer.
Like residents in some other parts of the city, Old Town is on trucked water in the winter, meaning each household has a limited supply to work with.
However, unlike other trucked-water neighbourhoods, Old Town has a network of overground pipes – essentially hose pipes – that sprawl out in summer and allow homes to tap into the mains supply instead. That helps, for example, if you need extra water to run a garden.
In the spring of 2023, city staff said the surface water lines were “legacy infrastructure” that had grown so cumbersome, the municipality could no longer cope. Staff had to spend “almost 1,000 hours” each year tracing leaks in those lines, councillors were told, at the same time as handling larger water breaks, storm sewers, street sweeping and other issues.
“To dedicate almost 1,000 hours of staff time to chase leaks around is getting harder to justify on our end,” public works director Chris Greencorn said at the time. City manager Sheila Bassi-Kellett said the lines were “not sustainable.”
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There was immense pushback from some Old Town residents. Ultimately, the city said it would spend 2024 studying the issue and drawing up options.
That was pre-wildfire. Now, City Hall says there’s so much going on that making big decisions about surface water lines is no longer a pressing concern.
“I would say that’s lower in the priority list right now. No service level will change. We’ll continue to fix that system as long as we have to until that priority system changes,” Greencorn told Cabin Radio last week.
Greencorn said the city and Old Town residents still “have to have a conversation” about surface water lines at some point, but “it’s definitely not happening in 2024.”
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“Our focus right now is wildfire preparation, making sure we’re ready for the summer and getting our major capital out the door. We have a really compressed calendar, even compared to our normal compressed calendar, because our budget didn’t pass until February,” he said.
“We’re two months late out of the gate just because of our budget process, which was impacted by wildfires. I wouldn’t foresee any changes or even discussions happening on surface water lines until 2025 – probably late 2025, Q3 or Q4.
“I want to assure people that we’re not just going to eliminate a service without fully analyzing it, engaging on it and considering all all factors and ramifications that might come of it.”
‘Huge implications’
Greencorn said the 2023 discussion with council about surface water lines that sparked the issue had been an “off-the-cuff” summary of how those lines are degrading, how they are “a level of service that other trucked areas of town don’t get, and how maybe that’s not the future path forward.”
But he said there are many considerations that go into how those lines are managed in future.
For example, any change from surface water lines to year-round trucked water in Old Town “would have huge implications” for the city’s trucked water contractor, Greencorn acknowledged.
“If we eliminate surface water lines, that’s immediately going to increase our trucked water costs for the summer that we don’t currently have. All those factors have to be taken into consideration before any significant decision is made,” he said.
The city is in the middle of a broader water rate review, looking at how residential and commercial water and sewer rates might change in the years ahead.
Greencorn said that review may be the best way to address surface water lines, but the review is a “complicated and convoluted piece of work,” he added.
“We still have to suss that out and see how that conversation is going to roll out, because if we include too many complications, it’s going to be a very difficult agenda to advance.”
