An internal study suggests that town of Kap needs to invest more money in the capital works budget to address aging watermain pipes in the community.
Asset management coordinator Jean Francois Philippe made the presentation to town council last night, and noted if the problems are not addressed then further issues can occur.
“Because you would be fixing water breaks, we’d have potentially more service outages, more frequent boil water advisories and a worse case if we start leaking too much much further in the future our water plant capacity could be exceeded.”
Phillipe says it’s hard to explain why the town’s average breaks per year is just at 8.5 per cent especially with the clay soil conditions and a harsh climate.
“I guess it was installed well and the piping was good,” he said. “It’s surprising that it’s holding up that well. Hopefully it holds up long enough so we can change it.”
Phillipe says that street reconstruction priority should be based on watermain failure history, sewer condition and not the age of the pipping. He adds the 1950s plus pipes replacement is more urgent then that installed in 1930s.
