~ YOUR COMMUNITY raiSCaeeh LS GVRD to study cause of local pipe break down COST to repair and assess the overall reliability of the recently repaired Capilano reservoir water main will run to over $400,900, according to Greater Vancouver Regional By TIMOTHY RENSHAW News Reporter District (GVRD) officials. GVRD chief engineer Art Pur- don said Tuesday total costs to repair the main will be about $300,000 and an additional $120,000 will be used to study the 50-year-old First Narrows water tunnel. “It has failed twice in the last four years. So we know something is wrong, (with the system),’’ Pur- don said. The latest and most serious system failure occurred at around 2:30 a.m. Dec. 11, when a 30-foot section of the main’s north shaft at the south end of Capilano Road blew, Jeaving areas of the North Shore and Vancouver without drinking water. While replacing the original sec- tion of exploded main, GVRD engineers discovered additional cracks. 130 feet down its 400-foot depth. The discovery further delayed repairs to the line, which runs beneath the Burrard Inlet from the south end of Capilano Road to Stanley Park. At full capacity, the 7%-foot diameter First Narrows water tun- nel delivers about 60 million galions of water daily to the Greater Vancouver area. On Friday, approximately 800 gallons of concentrated sodium hypochlorite were poured into the 48-inch diameter main to kill any bacteria that might have entered it during nearly four weeks of repair. GVRD operations manager Hans Krause said Friday the chlorination followed completion of repairs and subsequent initial testing of the line. He said a test flush of 10,000 gallons of water per minute had been sent through the line prior to Friday’s chemical sterilization “and everything checked out.’ The sodium hypochlorite, which was mixed with water to a solution 100 times that contained in regular tap water, was allowed to sit in the 900,000-gallon capacity section of Pipe over the weekend. On Tuesday, chemicals were ad- ded to neutralize the hypochiorite. Purdon said once the solution is neutralized it will be flushed into Burrard Inlet. The main, he said, will be phas- ed back into operation beginning Jan. 16 at 11:30 p.m. when service to downtown Vancouver will resume. If no problems result, more water will be released into the main on Jan. 23. “The entire system should be back to normal by the end of the month,’’ Krause said. He added that the main, made of concrete and steel, had to be phased back into operation because ‘‘you can’t rush water. There are terrific pressures involv- ed here. We don’t want to blow anything else.”” The main normally handles water pressures of 200 pounds per square inch. After it initially blew, water pressure was restored to downtown Vancouver by diverting water from another Capilano water main to a pumping station in Vancouver Heights and diverting water from the Seymour reservoir to Van- couver’s Little Mountain, which was itself being repaired at the time, leaving Vancouver a further 30 million gallons short. Purdon added that it was fortu- nate the main blew at a time when demand for water was relatively low. A failure during a time of peak water demand, he said, would have created a far more serious situa- Catch up on local sports PAGE 13 NEWS photo Mike Wakefield Give me a prake. THIS 1S one way to make sure your new skiing partner doesn’t get away ‘from you. On the slopes of Cypress Mountain recently a youngster e ends up pulling more * than his: