District of Squamish contractor Coastal Valley Construction (CVC) hit a snag during improvements to a Garibaldi Highlands water main last Thursday (June 24), and this morning, local residents discovered with little notice the municipality's headache would become their headache when their water was shut down for 12 hours with an hour's notice and without explanation.
The problems began Thursday during water main replacement work on Thunderbird Ridgemeant to accommodate increased water pressure from the soon-to-be Boulevard pump station.
Crews ran into problems when they came across an automatic valve that had shut off and could not be manually reopened.
"We managed, after a very long day on Thursday, to partially open the line," said district director of engineering Brian Barnett.
"And then Friday we checked the flows along there on Thunderbird Ridge and Glacier View and found out, although they were suitable for household use purposes, they were inadequate for fire protection."
The municipality worked with Fire Rescue to get protective measures on the ground throughout the weekend, and this morning (June 28), work began to permanently fix the problem.
"Hopefully residents understand it is this emergency situation that we're dealing with," said Barnett.
However neighbours were unaware of the problems and found out they'd be without water all day at 8:30 a.m. this morning when workers went door-to-door to inform residents, according to affected homeowner Nick Griffiths.
And despite Barnett's assessment that the work was for emergency purposes and water shutdown would last 12 hours, neighbours were not provided with a specific timeline or explanation except to say it was part of work being done on a water line underneath the roadway.
"We were asking 'Is that an emergency, did something happen?' And they said no, they're doing construction," said Griffiths.
"We were saying shouldn't they have put notices around? My wife and I were home so we ended up getting some water buckets and things like that, but we were asking them 'What about people who are out right now? You're just giving an hour's notice and the water's going to be shut off all day. Somebody could be coming back from the hospital, or a senior who needs to have some water. What are you going to do about that?'
"They didn't have any answers."
Griffiths called Municipal Hall to complain and to get some answers, and was told the district knew nothing about it, despite observing municipal workers shutting off the water.
The lack of notice, explanation and awareness at the district level caused Griffiths to question the town's ability to effectively communicate important issues.
"It seems that the muni and the companies can't get their act together to let citizens know what's going on."
Barnett said the 12-hour shutdown only affected about 10 homes, and residents with concerns can get through to him by contacting the district. He added he hasn't received complaints of a serious nature.
"I haven't had any complaints in terms of the elderly or if there was a child who needed water in part of their formula make up or anything like that -we haven't had any of those phone calls," he said.
"It's more just there's low water from a shower type of phone calls. So it's an inconvenience and certainly the district apologizes for that."
Barnett said municipal staff has held one debriefing meeting and intends to hold another next week to analyze strengths and weaknesses arising from the situation.
"We can review the current policy and procedures and hopefully learn from what went well and learn what didn't go so well and develop some procedures so that things are more smooth in the future."
