How Toronto kept the water flowing during blackout

- The city of Toronto was only days away from running out of water during last August^^s blackout, but conservation efforts, including the temporary shutdown of big industrial users, eased the threat.

Mike Price, the city's general manager of water and waste- water, said yesterday that during the power outage Toronto's residents were never in any immediate danger of facing empty water pipes.

His comments came in response to a story in a recent edition of the Toronto Star that was based on federal documents obtained under the Access to Information Act.

Those documents stated that on Aug. 15, one day after the blackout began, "the city of Toronto is currently meeting its demand for water, but just barely."

Price disputed that statement, saying Toronto had enough water supplies in its reservoirs to cope for several days.

"It gave the impression that we could only last a few hours longer, whereas we assumed we were going to last a few days longer," he said.

However, Price conceded: "Eventually, if the blackout had gone on for a few more days, yes, the taps would have run dry."

On a routine basis, the city keeps enough water on hand — 90 per cent to 95 per cent capacity averaged across the 14 sites — for two days of normal, average consumption.

Once the power went out at 4:11 p.m. on Aug. 14, the city could not collect any additional water for its 10 underground water reservoirs and four water towers.

Usually, it uses massive machinery to pump water into the reservoirs and water towers, doing so at night, when power is cheaper.

Because of the high quantities of electricity that equipment demands, it would be impossible to use temporary generators.

Permanent diesel generators and mobile generators were in use at 81 sewage-pumping stations. The only problem encountered was in the east end, where two dozen homes near Ashbridge's Bay had their basements flooded with raw sewage.

Once the blackout hit, consumption dropped significantly as a result of conservation efforts and a provincial decision to order all non-essential workers to stay home.

With industry effectively shut down, the sector that consumes a third of the city's water under normal conditions wasn't using any of the limited supply.

Power was gradually restored in various parts of the city, with some areas back online within 12 hours.

The city encountered a minor glitch when a water tower in Etobicoke ran low.

But because all of the water reservoirs and towers are linked, city officials managed to redirect flow so that residents in that area never knew of the problem, Price said.

He added that Y2K preparedness efforts and previous warnings from the provincial government about potential brownouts helped make the city well prepared for the blackout.

Staff had practised for an emergency response.

In an outage, it would not be possible to pump diesel, so all tanks were moved above-ground so fuel could be poured by hand.

Councillor Case Ootes (Ward 29, Toronto-Danforth), who was deputy mayor at the time of the blackout, said there was never any danger the city would run out of water.

While the federal documents pointed to communications problems, such as some emergency numbers of federal agencies being out of service or ringing unanswered, Ootes said that, generally, the city did not encounter many problems.

"At the start, there was some difficulties in making the connection, but into the second day, the co-operation was very good," he said.

"All in all, I think the city managed on its own because it had its own resources and co-operation from Toronto Hydro."

The federal documents noted that on Aug. 15, Bolton and parts of Brampton had no water because of the blackout.

Peel Region public works director Mark Schiller said the disruption in those areas wasn't caused by a backup power failure, but stemmed from a problem unrelated to the blackout: a break in a major feeder main, which meant the line had to be shut down for repairs for half a day.

He didn't have precise figures on how long water was disrupted or how many residents were affected.

Had the 60-inch-diameter pipe not broken, residents would have had lower water pressure but probably wouldn't have lost water supply entirely, Schiller said.

Pumping capacity was reduced because of the backup power supply being used during the blackout, Schiller said. The backup system can handle the demand for water on an average winter's day, he said.

Peel spent $20 million between 1999 and 2002 on providing backup power for use in blackouts.