Councillor’s update on power outages affecting Ward 9
Due to the recent power outages that have hit parts of Ward 9, and in light of the fact that several parts of Ward 9 continue to experience power outages more frequently and with greater severity than much of the rest of the city, I felt it was important to bring you up to date on what I know and what is being done. I have gathered information from Hydro Ottawa and from residents, and I am working with my office on a strategy for moving forward.
But first, it bears repeating that, given the reality of a changing climate, we must all expect an increase in extreme weather events, and to prepare ourselves accordingly. Just today, a tornado touched down in Barrhaven and my own family in Arlington Woods took cover in the basement while warnings blared on the television. While there is a lot of work to be done to make our city and our electrical grid more resilient, there is only so much that either the City of Ottawa or Hydro Ottawa can do prepare against events like a tornado. So, regardless of the city’s response, it’s critical that residents across the city learn how to increase our own personal resilience against severe storms and the outages that frequently result from them. And so I encourage all households to prepare an emergency kit to help them through the first 72 hours during of any potential outage.
Two Recent Outages
Here is what I know about the two recent power outages that affected the Fisher Heights / Skyline areas of Ward 9:
On July 9th at approximately 10:00am, an outage occurred in the Fisher Heights / Skyline area that initially impacted 1,712 customers. Please note: a “customer” represents an address. An apartment building would count as a single customer, as would a detached home. And so, 1,712 customers typically represent far more than 1,712 people. This was certainly the case on July 9th, as many of the “customers” included apartment buildings along Meadowlands.
For the July 9th outage, Hydro Ottawa notified my office of the situation via email, and the situation was communicated to residents via Twitter, as well as on the Hydro Ottawa Outage Map.
Over the course of the day, the number of customers without power decreased. Once Hydro Ottawa crews have isolated the cause of the outage, they begin the process of re-energizing lines in a methodical and safe manner, until power is fully restored. By 3:00pm, the number of impacted customers had decreased from 1,712 customers to 720. By approximately 6:00pm power had been fully restored across the ward.
The initial explanation for the cause of this outage was that it was “equipment related”. Nothing else was communicated publicly. As your Councillor, I have open lines of communication with senior leadership at Hydro Ottawa, and so I sought out more info.
On July 10th I spoke to senior leadership at Hydro Ottawa where I learned that the cause of the July 9th outages was a broken cross-arm on a hydro pole, which was in a residential backyard. The “cross-arm” is the horizontal bar that sits atop the T-shaped pole. These arms are made either of wood or of metal. When the cross-arm on this specific pole broke, it caused a break in the power line, which led to the outage.
I’ve asked Hydro Ottawa to let me know if the cross-arm had broken due to age, or tree damage. They have not yet answered, but a local resident shared with me that they had heard about the cross arm having “rotted”. I will try to confirm if this is true, because it’s important to know whether the infrastructure in this area old and past its life cycle, or if it has simply sustained damage due to wind events.
I’ve also asked Hydro Ottawa to share the location of this damaged pole (even just the postal code), because it may be helpful in ascertaining the age of infrastructure in that area, but it’s also important for us to understand how one single damaged asset can lead to an outage that crosses over so many neighbourhoods.
On July 13th at approximately 9:30am, there was another outage in the Fisher Heights area, but initially affecting a much smaller number of residents. Initially, it was reported that 63 customers were impacted. At 1:30pm, there were reports of two separate outages in the same general area of Fisher Heights, affecting a total of 1,590 customers. At this moment, and without further info from Hydro Ottawa, I am unsure if these two outages are connected. By 3:30pm, the Outage Map was still reporting one outage in Fisher Heights affecting 11 customers.
From the reports I’ve received from Hydro Ottawa, as well as from what’s been relayed to me by residents in the affected area who spoke to response crews, the outage that began at 9:30am was a “planned outage”. This outage was scheduled in order for crews to safety perform an emergency tree removal in the backyard of a house on Sunnycrest Drive. Hydro Ottawa has assured me that all impacted customers were notified of this planned outage in advance. I will attempt to verify this, but I can confirm that my office received no notice.
I also received messages from residents in this area at around 11:00am who reported hearing "a loud bang”, which we believe is attributed to a blown transformer. and contrary to what Hydro Ottawa said at one point, this blown transformer had nothing to do with the thunderstorm that took place that day, as the "loud bang" took place at least 90 minutes before the storm passed over this area.
Power was fully restored by 5:00pm on July 14th, which means this small area was without power for over 24 hours.
Until we hear otherwise, my office is assuming that these two outages (one on Sunnycrest and one on Lyall) are separate incidents, even though they occurred just a few blocks from each other.
Next Steps
While it is very likely that the ongoing labour strike by Hydro Ottawa workers affected the length of these outages this does take away from the fact that there are far too many outages impacting Ward 9. And another resident informed us about another outage on July 5th that affected residents in the Meadowlands area.
One thing is for certain: we need to understand what’s happening in Ward 9 when it comes to the frequency and severity of outages. The abnormally high frequency of outages is undeniable (especially considering the July 9th outage happened on a perfectly calm, sunny day). And although these recent outages might not be considered “severe” (either in terms of duration or number of customers impacted), there have been several episodes in recent years where the duration of the outage affecting parts of Ward 9 lasted far longer than other parts of the city. We need to understand why this is happening, and we need a plan to address it. The residents of Ward 9 are perfectly reasonable when they send me emails detailing just how exasperated they are about this situation, because it happens to them far too often.
What’s the cause? Is it because our area is more prone to extreme weather? Is it because the infrastructure is too vulnerable due to age? Is it because the maintenance and/or outage response procedure has flaws? We simply don’t know, even though we’ve been asking all the right questions.
Thankfully, Hydro Ottawa has been more open to our concerns, and we do have open lines of communication. And I believe that they are prepared to confirm that Ward 9 is among the hardest-hit areas of the city. Because it’s certainly not just Ward 9, but there’s definitely a pattern emerging of severe impacts affecting many parts of Nepean: in Ward 9 (Knoxdale-Merivale), in Ward 8 (College Ward), and in Ward 16 (River Ward). These are all older, established areas, with older infrastructure. We don’t know if this is the main cause, but it’s something worth exploring.
To this end, I’ve been collaborating with a small group of councillors – Councillor Johnson (Ward 8), Councillor Brockington (Ward 16) and Councillor Hill (Ward 3) – as an informal “working group” to try to come up with answers and solutions.
Here are some of the next steps that I’ll be advancing:
- I am looking to get more detailed, technical explanations of the July 9th and July 13th outages
- I will be asking for historical information on significant outages since the 2018 tornado, to determine the level to which Ward 9 has been affected in comparison with other areas of the city
- I’ll be working with Councillor Hill over the course of the summer to research and prepare questions for Hydro Ottawa when they present their Annual Report to Council in Fall 2023
- I’m working with Hydro Ottawa on some “town hall” meetings in Fall 2023 to meet with residents and communicate about specific electrical infrastructure issues affecting Ward 9
- I have begun conversations with Hydro Ottawa about the medium-term prospects to explore burying power lines in this affected area
- As I continue to advance my project to revitalize Merivale Road, I will ensure that the modernization of the electrical infrastructure along Merivale is taken into consideration alongside any planning for road infrastructure
Please rest assured that I am completely aware of the level of frustration being experienced by residents in Ward 9, and my team and I are focused on improving the situation. If you have questions or concerns, please email my team at [email protected]
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New Ways to Bus: Ward 9 Information Page
Thanks for visiting the Ward 9 information page on OC Transpo's New Ways to Bus (NWTB). This page is designed to provide you with some essential details on how the service changes may impact transit riders in Ward 9, including route adjustments, the rationale behind the changes, and how we have advocated for our residents.
We fully understand that many residents are legitimately frustrated with these changes. Many riders see these adjustments as another cost-cutting measure from OC Transpo, as they continue to face significant financial challenges.
OC Transpo's New Ways to Bus revised route network will focus on frequency, local service in your neighbourhood, and connections to key destinations. Through these many adjustments, OC Transpo's aim is to increase the reliability of our bus route system. Riders will see a shift in the number of downtown-focused bus routes, to routes that improve connections to community hubs and key destinations. Some customers may have to go further to the bus stop, or require additional transfers to buses or trains, or will have longer overall travel times. In addition to fewer Connexion routes, some routes will be retired due to low ridership and to improve connections to new routes and the O-Train. Retired routes will be replaced with alternative service nearby.
For now, the position that Councillor Devine and his team are taking is that we are very sympathetic to those concerns, but that we need to help residents prepare, because these changes are coming soon. New Ways to Bus comes into effect April 27th. What our office is focused on is trying to ensure that our residents are prepared for the change, and monitoring how the new system performs in its initial weeks and months.
New Ways to Bus website
For the most comprehensive information available, OC Transpo has created a dedicated New Ways to Bus website, complete with many useful items, including:
- a New Ways to Bus network map
- information on new signage
- a detailed list of routes that will not change, and routes that will change
New Ways to Bus - Travel Planner
The OC Transpo Travel Planner has now been updated to include the New Ways to Bus routes that take effect April 27th. Try it out! Enter your trip information for a trip that you might take now and then enter the same trip information for a date after April 27th and see what kind of changes there will be.
New Ways to Bus - Ward 9 Bus Routes
You can find specific information on each route in the entire New Ways to Bus network on their new website. Our office has also compiled a series of PDF route maps for all of the Ward 9 bus routes.
Public Information Sessions
OC Transpo has organized a series of community events for residents to meet with OC Transpo staff to ask questions about changes in the New Ways to Bus system. The event that was held on April 4th at the Nepean Sportsplex was poorly attended because OC Transpo did no provide clear information about where the event was taking place. Residents are encouraged to attend other sessions.
Councillor Devine's advocacy for Ward 9
Ever since the first draft of the New Ways to Bus network was rolled out well over a year ago, our office has been engaged with OC Transpo in trying to stop some of proposed changes. It wasn't altogether easy to get concessions, since Council has no authority over OC Transpo's operations. But we managed be successful in some of our attempts, though we were less successful in others. For the sake of transparency, we wanted to provide residents with a summary of our efforts over the last year.
Routes 282/82
- What we won: It's shocking to believe, but in the original draft of the New Ways to Bus network, Route 82 would have seen its service frequency cut down to peak hours only. This would've been devasting to the western part of Ward 9, who are already seeing other decreases in service. After strong advocacy from our office, Route 82 will maintain full-day, seven-days-a-week service. During peak hours, it will connect to Tunney’s Pasture, offering a viable replacement for the discontinued 282 express route.
- What we lost: Unfortunately, Route 282 was removed. While we fought to maintain express service, this decision reflects several lost express routes, due city-wide budget constraints. However, once the LRT Line 1 West extension is complete, riders will be able to take the 82 to Pinecrest Station, for a quicker ride downtown.
Route 173
- What we lost: Route 173 will no longer service Manordale, becoming a local route serving Barrhaven instead. We continue to object to the questionable rational for this decision, as Barrhaven has more than enough routes serving it. We are committed to monitoring the impact of his lost service, in the hopes of restoring something.
Routes 111/112/189
- What we won: When the first draft of the New Ways to Bus network was rolled out, we quickly noticed that the proposed changes to the 111/112 routes meant that there was no longer any bus service on Chesterton Drive, meaning that two schools, an apartment tower, and a large lower-income housing complex would see no service at all. Even worse, Chesterton Drive is on an incline! We pushed hard against this change, which resulted in Route 189 being re-directed to run along the entire length of Chesterton Drive. While this means riders will need to make an additional transfer, it would have been much worse if there was no route there at all.
Routes 89/86
- What we lost: Despite our advocacy, Routes 89 and 86 will see reductions and decreased frequency. We will continue to push for adjustments if transit reliability issues arise.
There are several other changes to service routes in Ward 9, some of which will result in an increased level of service. We'll try to post more information on these changes shortly.
