Live replay: Kamloops waterline break news conference

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:03]So, I'll give a quick update where we're at first. Okay.

[00:00:06]>> And then how who's asking questions first? Figure it out as we go. Okay.

[00:00:14]>> Just realized I shifted it and I'm not level >> introduction.

[00:00:24]Perfect.

[00:00:28]>> Good to go.

[00:00:30]Uh name's Joe Luzzon, assistant director and public works divisional manager with the city of Cam Loops. Uh here to give a quick update on the situation we have in East Cam Loops with the water break. So crews have located the water break. We currently are underway doing a repair.

[00:00:46]So from this point on, we're still we're hoping to be moving water late in the day today. From that point on, we're going to have some messaging going out just for residents to understand that through this to recharge the system, we will have some boil water and uh do not consumes. They'll be going out via buoyant alert to residents and uh we strongly suggest that they follow our website for updates.

[00:01:10]>> The do not consumes, how long might those end up lasting for?

[00:01:13]>> Uh to get testing back from the proper authorities will be up to 7 days. any indication as uh to which parts will be do not consume and which parts will be boiled?

[00:01:23]>> Uh currently we for utter care and worrying about the residents we are using anywhere that has uh farm status or uh industrial areas.

[00:01:34]>> So as do not consume >> as do not consume.

[00:01:36]>> And will that be in the homes as well?

[00:01:38]>> It'll be across that whole area we dictate via maps that we'll be supplying to the public.

[00:01:46]What's the tenative I you said hoping to get water moving later today. Is there tentative time you're hoping that >> you always have a tenative time that you want to hit, >> but at this point we're saying early evening, but once again once water is flowing it is going to take us time to fill the reservoirs in order for residents to be able to start consume to start utilizing water for non-conumption activities. But we will be con constant updates through media updates and buoyant alerts to do that.

[00:02:15]>> If the folks had followed the uh voluntary procedures that were asked of them yesterday, would be be in the situation that we are today?

[00:02:24]>> Uh I won't say we wouldn't be in the situation, but we would have had more time to do the repair before the reservoir started to run dry. So, anytime that we put out a do not do not use uh for is we're doing it to extend the time frame that we can do the repair, but unfortunately we did have situations where we were able to knock on doors and shut some things off, but we did have people not following that rule that shortened the time frame for us.

[00:02:52]>> Can you talk to us a little bit about how people will be getting water? Like I mean we're talking about potentially not having water for, you know, in some cases maybe a week.

[00:03:02]>> Well, you'll you'll have water. It just will be not do not consume. So, we would advise people to utilize, of course, there's bottled water places and such and locations throughout the city that sell water, but the key here is keep the infrastructure safe and allow people to continue to live their lives without disruption other than the drinking portion.

[00:03:26]>> And they'll still be able to at that at a point that you turn water on, people will have that for bathing, for toilets, >> correct? It will be a do not consume. So basically do not drink or consume any of the water for some of the areas >> and then boil for the other ones.

[00:03:40]>> Boil for the other ones or boil.

[00:03:44]>> Correct. Well, we would advise that they follow the health authority directions to boil their water for those amount of times.

[00:03:55]>> Uh we're working through that right now.

[00:03:57]So like I say, that's the stage two plan. We we have it there. What we're doing is finalizing some details regarding farm status and commercial and then we will release that all at once.

[00:04:08]>> I guess you know this started on Sunday as a water valve failure if I understand correctly. So I guess >> what happened to get us from Sunday to today?

[00:04:19]>> So Sunday was a water valve failure.

[00:04:21]When we fixed that it was noticed that a leak had began on the main line that fed out. So we had been working for the last couple days to locate that. In order to do that, we wanted to not put people out of water for an extended period of time.

[00:04:34]So how we run that is we fill the reservoirs and then once the reservoirs are at a capacity that we feel we still have enough water to supply residents for a four or 5 hour period, the crews dig. So we were working through that. As we were doing that, we were able to locate the leak, but unfortunately the repair to the leak is taking longer than that time frame. This water man is approximately 12 ft down. So, so it's a big dig. So, digging a hole to find a leak is a lot shorter time frame than actually doing the repair. So, that window of time that we had in reservoir capacity did not allow us to do the repair. Got it.

[00:05:09]>> What can you tell us about the main itself? How how big are we talking? I think about there's such a huge variety of >> Yeah, it it's a it's a 500 mm main. So, it feeds all of these canops.

[00:05:21]You >> guys have any idea? roughly just under two feet. Just 60 centimeters, 50 centimeters.

[00:05:28]>> So, it's this.

[00:05:29]>> Oh, yeah. It's a feeder.

[00:05:30]>> This is the kind of thing where we would have had a lot of water loss to potentially.

[00:05:36]>> Uh, yeah. I mean, our stations are monitored through a SCADA system. So, we can see when water is fluctuating in our reservoirs. So, that we have crews that are on 24-hour duty attendance, we call them, and they monitor that. So the leak was no the problem was noticed through that system and then we responded. Our response like I say I mentioned before was to continue to keep people in water until we could locate the leak. Once we locate the leak is when we need the time to do the repair.

[00:06:02]>> Just sorry I was just going to say was this a chicken and an egg sort of thing with the valve first and then the leak or one or the other or is this just separate?

[00:06:09]>> No, they were they were in items that occurred roughly at the same time. It's just we had to fix one before we could address the other and the valve was more important.

[00:06:17]>> How old is the feeder main if you know roughly?

[00:06:20]>> Uh I can't say that off the top of my head. I do have the dates inside but not >> off the top of your head. That's okay.

[00:06:26]Um so I assume in this case that is is there a plan to keep providing people water?

[00:06:32]>> Yep. Sure. So we do have truck uh water trucks, non-pottable water trucks at locations and bottles of water. So that is intended to stay in place until we can get the go ahead for people to start to utilize water in their homes.

[00:06:43]>> Gotcha. So it could be a week at the >> Oh no. So utilizing of water, we have a target of like I said this evening where people can turn their taps on. So that means the non-pottable water truck locations can be removed cuz you can bath, you can do all that. So what we're trying to do right now is if people do have the ability to use their washrooms or bathe, it just has to be with the water that is being trucked out there.

[00:07:05]Uh once we turn the water on that that's not going to be required anymore.

[00:07:08]>> You still giving out bottles of water though during the do not use time?

[00:07:13]>> No, we're going to pick a target time where once we have people in water like I say this was cuz we didn't have pe give people enough. There wasn't enough warning for people to stock up their supply. But that's what we're allowing people to do. People need to be looking at right now like say the people that end up in the boil water advisory will be able to boil but the ones in the Duke can not consume. We're trying to get that out quite shortly here. And once they know that, we're advising them to stock up on water products for themselves to consume.

[00:07:39]>> How much uh all told approximately these repairs going to end up costing?

[00:07:44]>> Uh I don't like to estimate that number until I start looking at where we're at.

[00:07:48]So I'm not willing to give that number at this time.

[00:07:50]>> How much does it cost so far?

[00:07:52]>> Haven't looked at that number deeply. I know, like I say, we've been crews have been on it for 2 days, but this this is a water feed main supply. This is not new to us. This is not like a water mane that we haven't not this particular one that we haven't dealt with in the past.

[00:08:06]It's just unfortunately the water volume being used we couldn't keep up with the repair. So, >> not not to be a naysayer, but I mean why 12 ft deep then if it's something that you guys have had to deal deal with in the past?

[00:08:17]>> Well, like I say, this pipe in this area, I'm not saying we've dealt with this size of pipe is not the first time we've seen this. 12 ft deep is all based on where the water needs to go and where it's coming from. And as we all know, Cam Loops does have one of the most complicated systems in North America with I mean we have upwards of 15 reservoirs being affected in just one section of town. So So we have a lot of pumps, a lot of systems that we need to maintain. This is uh unfortunately we're affecting a larger group of residents due to due to the location of the break, but um yeah, we're confident we'll be up and running hopefully in the near future.

[00:08:54]>> Is there something you can do proactively? I know it's hard with underground barrier utilities to prevent or look ahead to >> No, we have a full engineer team that does do they do modeling for these types of things. So this this pipe was not as all of them. There's testing that goes on. There's date of um install. They look at all that how much wear should be occurring with the pipes with the water that's flowing, what the lifespan is, and then there's a the plan in place to replace these utilities as we go.

[00:09:22]Unfortunately, breaks happen. breaks happen in new pipes and old pipes. So this just part of continuing to maintain a system like ours.

[00:09:30]>> Once you get the all sort of set who's going to be boil, who's going to be, you know, consume that, then does it shift over to IH for them to give the final clearance and then final approvals to get back to normal or >> we're currently working with IH on this.

[00:09:42]So we are in constant conversation as we work through this with what their requirements are of us and that's where this the do not consume and the boil water advisories are coming from. has been able to identify why the valve broke.

[00:09:57]>> The valve was uh broke. We had to close it due to the brake and then it failed at that time. So that was fixed within an evening. The brake itself, it's pipe underground. There's rocks that we have failures where at this time our concentration is not on Y, but how do we get people back into water? That's all followup.

[00:10:15]>> You you talk a little bit about um water consumption after in terms of the boil water. Do you want people to consume less water after this or back to normal?

[00:10:24]Once once the water gets turned on, can they just go back to watering their lawns, all that stuff?

[00:10:28]>> No. So, what we're doing is through through our updates, we'll be letting people know what they should and should not be doing. So, we're going to be saying you can utilize it for but it will be under a restriction cuz we have to fill all the reservoirs. That's still the key. Just it's not like turning your tap on and off. When we turn this tap on, we need to fill thousands and thousands of liters of reservoir. So our, like I say, getting it to the residents is key, but also getting full fire suppression back in the area as well. So once we're happy with fire suppression numbers, then we will look at letting people go back to normal >> to normal.

[00:11:01]>> Cuz this is one of those things where when we were talking this morning, we talked about the tenders and getting those things like how confident are you that we're okay for fire suppression for right now?

[00:11:10]>> That's a question that's hard to answer.

[00:11:12]You got to see, like I say, we are we've worked with KFR. They feel right now we're in a situation where we don't have to take drastic measures, but I can't see into the future to see what comes and how big of what something is. So, >> we have a plan.

[00:11:27]>> Our fingers crossed.

[00:11:28]>> I don't like to cross fingers. I like to have a plan.

[00:11:30]>> How many houses roughly impacted if you have that?

[00:11:33]>> Uh houses right now are numbers are north of 7500.

[00:11:39]>> And it's Rose Hill Road basically.

[00:11:41]>> Rose Hill Road east basically.

[00:11:42]>> Okay. uh any number of uh as far as actual residents are concerned >> uh of course those would be estimated numbers at this time uh being that's not our focus of research but the last estimated number I had was around 19,000 >> a fifth of the population right roughly >> roughly you guys ever dealt with anything this of this scale before >> leaks yep yep water leaks sewer force main breaks the crew there like I say we this is not the first time they've had to respond to a mainline break like this This unfortunately is the first time where we didn't get a big enough shutdown period to respond before residents start to notice.

[00:12:19]>> As the expansion continues up in the Juniper area, I mean, is this going to be sort of like the norm, the shutdowns and continuations like as you guys sort of build up the infrastructure or is this sort of just completely separate from that?

[00:12:29]>> Well, tied to added uh residents is added infrastructure that is put in place. So, our infrastructure, we hit limits where we allow we say certain things need to happen before more houses can go in. So, it's a different process.

[00:12:43]It's uh but like I say, those are somewhat tied with our repairs as well.

[00:12:47]So, we improve infrastructure to accommodate homes. The big thing again there would be fire suppression. We can't build homes if we don't have fire suppression.

[00:12:55]>> It's a good thing it's going to rain tomorrow.

[00:12:57]>> Yeah. I mean, not having this in the warmest day of the year is a per is a little bit better, but but we'll see.

[00:13:04]They don't like speculative like is this going to be a major cost for the city?

[00:13:08]Is something contingency for any kind?

[00:13:12]>> This would not be an unseen cost we've seen at other locations. So not unexpected.

[00:13:18]>> So contingency would cover that off then. No problem.

[00:13:21]>> This will be all based on Yes.

[00:13:22]Utilities. There's there's reserves. We hold reserves for this type of things to occur.

[00:13:28]>> Okay. I think that's Any final thoughts?

[00:13:31]Anything else you want to get out?

[00:13:33]Please listen to the advisories we're putting on. The crew is working as hard as they can. We have a team long-term planning as we speak inside what we put out. We're not putting out just for knowledge. We're asking you to follow it. Our goal is to get you back in water as quick as we can. So, please help us do that.

[00:13:51]>> On that note, I know the post, I think it was Facebook, but boy maybe that, you know, threatened fines if people don't put on, you know, the city will go in and shut your water.

[00:14:00]>> Yes.

[00:14:00]>> Has that happened before? How do you go about doing something like that? Because I imagine that crosses a whole host of other >> we notify and then we act. So there's a conversation that generally occurs and then we act on it.

[00:14:11]>> Your boss said this morning it the committee of the whole that staff were actually out this morning shutting out water.

[00:14:18]>> We had a couple locations yes we chose to shut off in order to save water for residents.

[00:14:22]>> That smiley happy uh go >> wouldn't have to shut it off if but once again I understand not everybody gets alerts. So sometimes we need to help help out and they were notified at appropriate times to let them know what we had done.

[00:14:36]>> No uh no tickets issued though.

[00:14:37]>> No.

[00:14:38]>> Do you think that people are paying less attention to media and those kind of things based on others? I guess like does it seem that there's less compliance maybe based on people not paying attention or >> I can't answer to that. Um social media is something we do. I don't follow steps. Sorry. But like I say for us it is one of the quickest ways we can get things out to people. Everybody has a phone in their hand or something that they can look at. So we try to take advantage of all all methods we can hoping that people comply.

[00:15:09]Perfect.