Storm cleanup becoming costly

Winter is the farthest thing from most people’s minds right now — but not for Hamilton city officials. They’re still dealing with issues that this year’s harsh season brought about.

This winter was colder and longer than usual. So much so, that there are still over one hundred hydrants damaged by the weather that need repairing — and city officials are now requesting a significant increase in the budget to fund emergency water-system repair work.

The overall budget planned for the full 12 months of this year was four million dollars. That was for water main repairs, hydrant repairs, and road restoration. Now, Hamilton water projects it needs around nine million dollars for 2014, which is more than double the original budget. It’s the result of what the city is calling an extraordinary winter with a dramatic increase in service calls.

On average the city repairs about 202 hydrants a year. In 2014 however, they’ve already dealt with 511, which is a 60 per cent increase. As for frozen services, which is when pipes leading into a private property freeze, the city usually gets called out to two cases. This year, it’s responded to 185 to date, which is a 99 per cent increase. As for water main breaks, there’s an average of 285 each year — this year there have been 398 to date.

To deal with the high spike in service calls, the city had to bring in external contractors. The original cost budgeted for outside services went from 150-thousand dollars a month to nearly four-hundred-thousand over the winter months. Hamilton water says it wants to build this potential increase in funding into the budget each year going forward.

Dan McKinnon is the Director of Hamilton Water: “We’re probably going to spend between 4.5 to 5 million dollars a year just to do the paving behind the actual water main repairs. So that’s just asphalt and concrete, that kind of thing. So I think it really highlights the challenges that we have. I mean that’s a big dollar figure to just do the paving behind the water main repairs.”

The recommendation to increase the budget was passed by the public works committee yesterday. The motion will now go before city council at its next meeting.