Road salt likely to blame for costly Pie-IX Blvd. water main break

Deterioration from road salt was a major factor in a burst pipe that put an east-end thoroughfareunderwater and led to the flooding of hundreds of homes last October, the City of Montreal says.

The city concluded that salt that had accumulatedin small cracks in the water main on Pie-IX Boulevard was to blame for the break, spokesman PhilippeSabourinconfirmed in anemail.

Sylvain Ouellet, an oppositioncity councillorresponsible for the area, saidthe Coderre administrationisn't doing enough to prevent that disintegration and prevent another burst main.

The City of Montreal is set to vote on a $546,000contract next Mondaywith Pure Technologies Ltd.

The Calgary-based firm will inspectroughly 10 per cent of citypipes made with the same mix ofconcrete and steel to determine if they are also at risk.

The inspections will take two years.

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The city already spentmonths doing extensive visual and camera inspections of thewatermainalong Pie-IX Boulevard from theMetropolitan Highway toRosemont Boulevard, but itdidn't have the expertise to do the analysis offered by the Calgary-based firm.

Ouellet said the work should bedone more quickly, andthe currentroad-saltmixtureshould no longer be used, considering it's already clear the pipes are susceptible to corrosion.

"We don't want other families to have their basements flooded," he said.

A better but more costly alternative?

The solution, Ouellet said,is to switch to a less corrosive mixture, even if it costs more.

Last year, the cityexperimentedwith morecostly, environmentally friendlymixtures to keep roads free of ice.

Ouelletsaid theCoderreadministration abandoned that idea for the coming year due to the high cost.

"It's really strange that the city finally admits the salt is probably the main factor, and in previous months they [forced] boroughs to use only the regular salt, which is more corrosive," said Ouellet,Projet Montral councillor forVilleraySaint-MichelParc-Extension.

"It's a stupid decision."

In the long run, the city will end up saving money by preserving their pipes, he said.

In all,more than 600 buildings were flooded and about 250 people were forced out of their homeswhen the pipe burst on Pie-IX Boulevardon Oct. 30, 2015.

CBC News Investigates previously documented how a slow response time and poor planning exacerbated the damage following the break.