A boil-water advisory in effect for Spruce Cliff and parts of Wildwood and Rosscarrock is posing challenges for businesses in the area, including those in and around Westbrook Mall.
For Jubilations Dinner Theatre and Aussie Rules Piano Bar, the advisory almost meant cancelling a weekend of sold-out shows.
“It was huge,” said Syreeta Bennie, the company’s vice-president. Around 10:30 a.m. on Friday, the staff realized there was no water coming into the building.
“We called 311 to determine what was going on, and were told that they had found an issue in the water main along this block, and to just hold tight,” she said.
Water hauler to the rescue
But they could only wait so long before they needed to start prepping food for Friday night’s show. After calling back a few more times throughout the day and checking the website regularly for updates, there still wasn’t a timeline for when the issue would be resolved.
“Our president was like, ‘What do we do? We’ve got to find a solution.’ So he called around, and we got to connect with Big Rock (Water Hauling),” Bennie said.
“They were fantastic. They were here within the hour, they had a plumber out right away to check to see, can we make this happen? And everyone was super creative to make sure that we could have a show for the guests.”
Not long after Big Rock had hooked up to building, she said, the city notified them their water was back in service, but that there would be a boil-water advisory in effect.
“That made us go, ‘Thank goodness we had this.’ There’s no way we could boil water for 2,000 people,” she said.
Big Rock Water Hauling came to the rescue of Jubilations Dinner Theatre and Aussie Rules Piano Bar after a boil-water advisory came into effect for the area on Friday.
Thanks to the water supply from Big Rock, they were able to run business as usual for Friday night’s shows, and will continue for the remainder of the weekend.
“It was a no-brainer for the president to say, ‘We gotta make this work. We cannot cancel all of these people.’ We’ve got birthdays, we’ve got anniversaries, we’ve got people who’ve been planning for months,” Bennie said.
“It was so important to us that we were able to maintain everybody’s plans to the best of our ability. It’s gonna be a really expensive undertaking as a business, but we felt that the loss of our guests not having the experience we promised is greater than the cost of doing that.”
The city said Friday the advisory, which is unrelated to the Bearspaw South feeder main updates, will likely be in effect for a minimum of three days. Bennie said she hasn’t received any updates yet, but given the cost of the third-party water services, it may not be feasible for them to continue with them through the coming week.
A boil-water advisory notice was posted outside businesses at Westbrook Mall on Friday.
“I feel bad for the people at 311, because they don’t know either,” she said. “Fingers crossed, it’s fixed by Monday.”
Rod Birnie-Browne, one of the owners of Big Rock Water Hauling, said he’s happy the company is able to help out other businesses in times of crisis.
“It’s satisfying to us too, because we’re a business, and we’ve actually had our water main break here outside of our building, and we were able to take care of ourselves and never had to shut down,” he said. “But we help a lot of businesses out with emergency portable water.”
Calgary climate poses challenge
The city, he said, does the best they can in situations like this, and recommends Big Rock’s services where applicable.
“But, you know, the pipes got old. They break,” he said. Even in areas of the city with newer pipes, he added, the repeated freezing and thawing in Calgary’s climate can wreak havoc on the infrastructure.
“It’s just the nature of the beast. It freezes, and then it warms up … and that causes pipes underground to break,” he said.
ddekuyper@postmedia.com