{"id":670175,"date":"2026-05-15T01:44:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T01:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/670175\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T01:44:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T01:44:20","slug":"kamloops-residents-hit-by-water-main-break-told-to-keep-taps-off-while-repair-underway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/670175\/","title":{"rendered":"Kamloops residents hit by water main break told to keep taps off while repair underway"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Estimated 3 minutes<\/p>\n

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City of Kamloops construction crews have begun work to repair a broken water main that left around 8,000 households without water for more than 36 hours.<\/p>\n

The water supply, which has been shut off since early Tuesday, is technically flowing again, but the city said it’s critical no one in the affected areas run their taps Thursday while the repair is underway.<\/p>\n

Staff will be working throughout the day to patch the broken section of the concrete 500-millimetre water pipe, along River Street, with a section of PVC pipe.<\/p>\n

The city sent out an alert to residents in the affected areas Thursday morning letting them know not to use water until 6 p.m.<\/p>\n

“They have successfully excavated. They’re making good progress. So they’re in the process of cutting out the damaged piece currently,” said Joe Luison, the city’s assistant director of civic operations, at a news conference Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

He said he’s confident that crews will complete the repair by Thursday evening, and the city will update residents regardless of the outcome by 6 p.m. PT that night.<\/p>\n

Up to 2 weeks for drinking water to return<\/p>\n

He said the city was forced to cut off water on Tuesday after water use by residents drained the 15 affected reservoirs below safe levels.<\/p>\n

“We experienced what happens when we couldn’t maintain [water pressure], so we’re just asking for support from the community in order for us to make this a success.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ConstructionTraffic is still being detoured around the break on River Street on Thursday. (Jenifer Norwell\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Luison said once the repair is done and positive pressure can be maintained in the system, crews will start flushing lines and working with Interior Health on testing. He said it could take up to two weeks for residents to be given the all clear to drink water from their taps.<\/p>\n

The Kamloops Thompson School District has reopened all the schools in the affected area, with essential water use available for flushing toilets and washing hands. Safe drinking water is being provided.<\/p>\n

Communication frustration<\/p>\n

Some people in the area say they have been frustrated by how the city communicated the closure.<\/p>\n

Manny Mattis, the owner of Harold\u2019s Restaurant in Valleyview, told CBC News he kept operating on Monday and Tuesday because he didn\u2019t receive any notification from the city that the water wasn’t safe to use.<\/p>\n

He said there was no communication from the city and that he was told to download the Voyent Alert! app for updates.<\/p>\n

“We haven’t heard from anybody, but that would be a concern especially if somebody had got sick over the water, that could have been a problem.”<\/p>\n

Mattis said he\u2019s hoping he\u2019ll be able to start serving customers before the long weekend.<\/p>\n

“If we have to close through the long weekend, it’ll be a huge loss. This is one of the busiest weekends in the year.”<\/p>\n

Kamloops Deputy Mayor Katie Neustaeter told CBC’s Daybreak Kamloops the city is taking lessons away from the incident.<\/p>\n

“I think that’s come through loud and clear that there needs to be a postmortem on this that really examines how information is put out, when information is put\u00a0out.”<\/p>\n

Crews hope to have the main repair of the pipe completed by end of day Thursday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-670175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}