The Bow: List Edition
Super boring to everyone who’s not up here, but:
ITEM ONE: they’ve finally fixed the path that got washed away in The Great 2024 Calgary Water Main Break last June.
The geese are mad because that was a prime “eat ALL the grass” spot.
ITEM TWO: we just got hella rain (Friday and Saturday were the rainiest days Calgary’s seen since the 2013 flood) and the Bow is really muddy and fast right now. Ignore my terrible camera skills.
END!
Water, Water…Everywhere!
Calgary’s water…HAS RETURNED!
I guess it’s better that all of this nonsense happened in the summer rather than in -40 degree snowy hell.
I mean, I guess it could happen in -40 degree snowy hell, but maybe these repairs will hold.
FOR NOW.
Edit: we actually did a decent job of conserving during this time. It’d be nice if we could conserve like that all the time, though…
So Very, Very Brr
So one of the recommendations for water conservation during our water main shutdown is to limit showers to five minutes. This isn’t that hard to do; I can run the water to rinse, turn it off to soap/shampoo, then turn it on to rinse again. The problem is that I have so completely destroyed my body’s ability to regulate its temperature that as soon as the water is off after rinsing the first time, I am
SO
RIDICULOUSLY
COLD
Like, it’s still pretty warm here, both during the day and overnight, and I usually am quite warm when I get done running. But I cannot handle that little change in temperature that comes from having wet skin in the shower. I literally start shivering like I’m out in the middle of one of our -30 snaps.
I’m pretty sure if I had to do this in the winter I’d die.
Can’t wait until the water’s back.
Water Main Shutdown COMMENCE
Here we go again!
It sounds like this repair (these repairs?) are going to take a while; we’ll see if the city complies or if people will start rebelling, haha.
The city did do a pretty bad job of getting the word out about this second shutdown, though. You’d think with something as critical as not running out of potable water would warrant, I don’t know, at least like a pamphlet in the mail. Or they could do like they did with the original water main break and send out an emergency alert. Just so that people know what’s going on.
Bah. Who knows. We’ll see.
The Great 2024 Calgary Water Main Break Saga: An Update
So the water’s still off, but it sounds like they’re at the stage where they’ve repaired everything they can see and are going to start flushing the pipes and then test the water quality. If the water quality is good, they can start running the water properly. So we’ll see how that goes!
Here are some fun pictures from around the Parkdale and Montgomery neighborhoods:
Keep conserving, Calgary!
And go spend some money at the businesses in Bowness; they’re losing a lot of business due to the road closures.
A big section of the bike/walking paths are blocked off due to the flushing/testing.
Signs on the fence around the flushing/testing.
A shot through the fence of the part of the pathway that got washed away by the initial break.
Party time!
Well, hell.
So apparently the water main break is bad enough that they’re expecting it to take anywhere between three and five weeks to completely repair.
I don’t know if the city can maintain this level of water usage restriction for that long.
I guess we’ll have to see, though, huh?
Ugh.
Ugh. PEOPLE.
Regarding the water main break: the number of comments I’ve seen from people who are like “THIS IS ALL A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY, I’M GOING TO TAKE A FIVE HOUR SHOWER AND WATER MY LAWN FOR A DAY AND A HALF JUST OUT OF SPITE” is absolutely disgusting.
Like, even if this whole thing was a government conspiracy, that doesn’t change the fact that the city will run out of potable water if we don’t conserve it for the next week or so. And how angry will you “government conspiracy” idiots be when you turn on the tap and nothing comes out? Believe whatever dumbass theory you want, but don’t allow your belief to make this worse for the rest of us.
I don’t know if it’s my imagination or not, but it seems like people’s ability to have empathy and compassion for others (or even just making a small sacrifice to help out others) has greatly decreased as of late. It’s pretty distressing. Anyone else notice that?
Edit: somewhat related. Where is the responsibility? Where is the common sense? Y’all go to a concert where everyone is screaming their lungs out for three hours and then go all “surprised Pikachu face” when you get COVID? UGH.
Edit 2: people laughed at my “water hoarding” in my office, but WHO’S LAUGHING NOW????
OH SHIT
So as I was browsing the Calgary subreddit last night, there was a post about how the neighborhoods of Bowness, Montgomery, and Parkdale (Parkdale being the neighborhood at the bottom of our big hill) had either no water or very little water pressure in their taps. Turns out a water main broke on 16th Ave. and crews were having a hell of a time shutting the water off before finally getting the gushing to stop. After reading this post, I checked our water pressure and it seemed fine, but I decided to fill up the five or so water bottles I had lying around the house just in case.
Fast forward to this morning. I’d forgotten about the broken water main until mile 2 of my run, at which time I got an emergency alert message on my phone saying that the water main break was a critical one, Bowness was under boil water advisories, and that everyone was being advised to conserve water.
I didn’t know quite how bad things were by this point, but in another five minutes or so I hit the part of the river path that goes behind all the athletic fields in Montgomery. The path, the parking lot next to the path, and the road going through the athletic fields were all taped off.
So I had to switch my route around and run up Home St. to see if I could get around the blocked area. Turns out they had a whole section of 16th Ave. blocked off – where the water main break happened, of course – and were already trying to fix things. I was able to run my regular route through Bowness and read more about the main break once I got home.
Turns out it’s pretty serious.
Hopefully they can get it fixed within a week.
Edit: HAHA NOPE (see June 14th’s blog post)
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