Watermain break closes Ottawa at King in Kitchener
Posted Mar 5, 2015 04:17:21 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A watermain break has forced the closure of Ottawa Street North at King Street in Kitchener.
The watermain that broke was a 6 inch cast iron watermain from 1950, and that intersection is not expected to reopen until 7 o’clock tonight.
Crews are also busy working on two other watermain breaks in Kitchener including one on Craig Drive and another on South Drive.
It’s been an expensive year for watermain breaks.
“We’re sitting at $450,000 but that doesn’t include the final road cut” says Tammer Gaber, Manager of Operations and Utilities for the City of Kitchener. “What we usually do is do a temporary repair, and then we go back in the summer time, our operations crews go back in the summer time, and do a final repair so that could add upwards of 30 to 40 percent.”
This year alone there were 26 watermain breaks in January, 31 in February and 11 so far in the first five days of March.
Officials say we’re seeing a spike in watermain breaks due to the frost in the ground thawing, but as it gets warmer the breaks should settle out.
