Dear Editor
I am responding The Chestermere Anchor article about our water mains issue a few weeks ago, ‘Chestermere man drowning in debt’.
It is interesting that CUI is now talking to residents and trying to come up with deals for costs etc.
In my opinion this is only because the residents of the Cove have grouped together to demand answers and likely because of the exposure from several Anchor articles about this problem. There has certainly been no attempt to help orcommunicate with previous home owners.
We were told about our leak on June 8th, our water was immediately shut off and then we were left with no information or help of
any kind. Two young guys checked for a leak, turned our main line off and that was it. Not even a suggestion of how to go about getting repairs done.
We received absolutely no help from CUI and when we tried to talk to them they did not even have the decency to call us back,
we had to keep calling them.
Dirk from CUI did mention to us during a phone call that CUI was offering home owners the opportunity to have the line repaired when the city was working in front of their houses and then quickly changed the subject when I showed interest.
It sounded very much like we were supposed to be given the offer of repairs when the road was dug up but someone did not do their job and instead we were left with a huge bill.
When we called back and questioned Dirk about this he claimed the process had only just been put in place and it was too late for us to be helped as the road side work was already completed, (it was aprox 2 months between the road being dug up and our leak being detected so not a lot of time but a lot of coincidence in our line leaking right after the road work was completed)
It appears that the cove residents are now receiving the deal on the repair costs that we (and any others in the same situation) should have been given too.
All home owners in this same situation should be compensated by CUI for the difference between whatever price cove home owners are given and the cost of repairs all ready done. I read of one home owner that paid $25,000, we paid $9,450 and it looks like cove home owners are being told aprox $3,000-$5,000 and that may even come down.
There seems to be a huge lack of communication within CUI and in our case no attempt to communicate with the home owners either.
There also appears to be a lack of understanding of basic plumbing etc.
The latest Anchor article mentions ‘smart pigging technology’ and the article reads as if no one at CUI knew what that was!
Surely these people should have some knowledge of the very business they are in and at least look into ways to deal with the issue before the residents have to do the work for them, they have known for several years that this problem exists.
When someone is (over) paid $350,000 per year (one reason CUI is losing money?) to run a small community business it is sad to think they have no knowledge of that business.
Thanks,
Bob Cable
