Edwin Parr Composite School (EPC) was unexpectedly shut down April 30 due to a water main break.
Classes were cancelled as maintenance crews worked to repair the break, which was discovered the previous night April 29, according to Aspen View Public Schools communications officer Ross Hunter.
“Water service is required to run a school and if it stops operating it's incumbent on us to fix it,” Hunter said in an interview. “These things happen. Hopefully not often, but they happen."
Hunter said the exact cause of the break is “impossible to diagnose” due to the main being located 10 feet underground. But such breaks typically occur due to shifting in the ground, Hunter said.
“Water mains break on occasion. Sometimes it’s due to aging infrastructure; sometimes it’s due to ground shifting, things like that," Hunter said.
EPC principal Desmond Nolan said he was impressed by the maintenance department's speed in getting the water main fixed.
“I was really proud of our maintenance department. They did an excellent job identifying the issue, being able to get it fixed in a timely manner,” Nolan said, adding he was unsure if the repair might take one or two days. “Quite a complicated process to get that fixed.”
The lost school day does affect teacher schedules, Nolan said, but more than enough instructional minutes are scheduled at the start of the year to make up for any unexpected closures.
“The nature of our whole profession is to be flexible because things like this do happen,” Nolan said.
The exact cost to repair the water main will take time to calculate due to invoices, Ross said.
He also said water main breaks are not usually tracked at a division level.
“I don’t know of a recent occurrence of a water main break at one of our schools. I don’t think it’s frequent enough we would even chart when these happen. A water main is not a piece of infrastructure that requires maintenance,” Ross said.
Students and staff are expected to move out of the current EPC school building after the end of this school year to move to a new school building near the Athabasca Regional Multiplex.
But Ross said the division is still required to fix a water main break even with the limited time left for the school at its current location.
"The fact that it’s in the old EPC is frankly irrelevant,” Ross said. “Water service is required to run a school and if it stops operating its incumbent on us to fix it.”
