During an analysis for the infrastructure department’s first quarter report to council, Trevor Rutley, the director of infrastructure services, noticed something strange in the water production data.
The numbers for quarter one of 2024 were higher than the previous year, and when staff compared the well production data to the metered consumption data from the finance department, there was a gap — an indication that the system was losing water somewhere. Water used from fire hydrants is not metered, but the data was high enough Rutley flagged it for investigation on Monday, April 15. By Tuesday, Rutley told the committee of the whole during an April 23 meeting, staff had narrowed down the location of the leak to Zone 1 in Lower Gibsons. By Wednesday, they identified a likely candidate and by Friday, the leak was addressed.
The weather was on their side. Since it had been a dry week, staff were able to find a wet patch that hadn’t dried up with the weather, Rutley told Coast Reporter. They were able to trace it back to an old disconnected service that had not been fully capped at the main. Water leaking from the valve was disguised by overgrown vegetation, making it undetectable in wet weather, Rutley said. Staff also found water on one side of the catch basin on a storm main, which they found was coming from a nearby fire hydrant that wasn’t fully sealed.
On Monday, April 22 — a week after first detecting the leak — staff compared the water flow over the previous week and found daily averages were down 20 to 25 per cent, Rutley told the committee.
The response was a “really fantastic effort for our operators, our internal staff, our public works department. In quickly responding to recognizing the importance of addressing and resolving the leaks, I was very impressed by the team effort to address all of that,” Rutley said at the April 23 meeting.
David Croal, who was acting as deputy mayor for that meeting, said the situation advocates for the importance of metering. “You can’t fix what you don’t know is happening.”
