Watermain work continues as crews prepare to bring line back into service

As city council faces questions over what officials knew about an aging infrastructure, Calgary's water system is still vulnerable.

The City of Calgary has replaced a broken section of the Bearspaw South feeder main and is days away from bringing it back online, but officials say water use remains unsustainable.

On Friday morning, city officials announced Thursday’s water consumption level was 508 million litres, up by a million litres from the day before.

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It’s also the fifth consecutive day water usage has been in the critical zone, which means that existing water infrastructure at the Glenmore water treatment plant has been working non-stop to fulfill the city’s needs.

On Thursday, officials said residents only need to save about 30 litres of water each day to push usage levels back down to 485 million litres – the level needed to give the Glenmore plant a rest and replenish the city’s underground reservoirs.

Officials are asking residents to only flush toilets when needed, run dishwashers and washing machines with only full loads and consider shortening showers as much as possible.

Pipe’s fixed – so what now?

Construction on the watermain is now complete and crews are backfilling the site. Once that’s done, the road over the pipe will be repaired.

Before water service is restored, crews must complete four main steps for the seven-kilometre-long stretch of empty pipe.

That includes filling the feeder main, testing water quality, stabilizing the system and then easing out of water conservation measures.

Officials say the empty pipe will be filled slowly, using water from the Bearspaw water treatment plant, to allow crews to monitor the system’s pressure sensors and other instruments for any signs of stress or damage.

Once filled, the water quality will be tested with support from Alberta Health Services, a process that will take about a day to complete.

After quality is confirmed, crews will reconnect the feeder main to the larger network, which is a critical point in the process.

“System stabilization is expected to take about 48 hours and carries the highest risk, as pressure changes can stress pipes and connections. Crews will closely monitor the system and adjust as needed,” officials said in a news release.

United Conservative Party attacks Nenshi

The United Conservative Party (UCP) caucus issued a statement on Thursday where it took aim at former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, now the leader of the Alberta NDP.

It accused him of failing to make key decisions and orchestrating delays on mitigating the Bearspaw feeder main problem while he was in office.

“This report is damning,” said Chestermere-Strathmore MLA Chantelle de Jonge in the statement.

“Calgarians and all Albertans deserve leadership that safeguards essential services with planning and accountability. If Nenshi couldn’t manage the city’s water system, how can anyone trust him to manage an entire province?”

The UCP says some of the biggest mistakes occurred while Nenshi was serving as mayor, including lowering safety standards in 2011, ignoring expert warnings in 2015, delaying safety checks in 2017 and 2020 and failing to fix issues caused by low water standards in 2021.

In a statement, Naheed Nenshi said the independent panel report is not about placing blame on anyone.

“It’s about ensuring that not only does this get fixed, but that the conditions leading to this never happen again.”

Mandatory Stage 4 water restrictions are expected to remain in place until water service is back to normal.

A spokesperson for Mayor Jeromy Farkas sent CTV Calgary a statement about what he knew about the state of the city’s water infrastructure while he was a sitting city councillor.

“As a councillor, Mayor Farkas was aware of the aging water infrastructure which our city relies on,” the statement read. “That’s why he took leadership early on in December 2018, alongside Counc. (Druh) Farrell, to address some pressing issues facing Calgary’s water system, including taking direct action to address the lead pipes which the city still had in use at the time.

“The mayor remains committed to fixing this problem,” the statement added, “not just by getting the work done to get the Bearspaw Feedermain back online - but with a generational fix that sees a replacement pipe installed to solve this problem for today, tomorrow and the next generation.”

Council defers recommendations

City council has voted to accept the independent review into the 2024 failure of the Bearspaw South feeder main, while deferring its recommendations following a motion brought forward by Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot.

Council has directed administration to return on Feb. 3 with recommendations and an implementation plan, including resource requirements.

Asked what he knew about water infrastructure during his 17 years on council, Chabot said the feeder main was never identified as a top priority.

“We were always advised to have some very near-term failures and high-priority things that we needed to invest in, but the South feeder main was never identified,” Chabot said.

He said he understands a report in 2017 raised concerns about the pipe, but he was not on council at the time and does not know what information was shared.

“The only time that I was made aware of how vulnerable this line was is just recently,” he said, referring to a high-priority action report provided to administration last fall.

“We never saw that.”

Chabot said one of the most significant findings of the report was a lack of information flowing to council.

“I would say that the biggest finding from this report is that council was sheltered from knowing all of the information,” he said. “Council should never be sheltered from having all the information.”

He said limited funding has often forced council to focus on immediate needs rather than long-term infrastructure planning.

“We have limited sources of revenue, and then we have to prioritize where we invest that,” Chabot said. “We address the critical needs of today as much as we possibly can within our limited financing.”

Despite debate over governance and accountability, Chabot said there is broad agreement on the immediate next step.

“The most urgent thing, of course, is something we can all agree on — we need to replace a six-kilometre pipe, full stop,” he said.

Political implications

The findings of the independent review have quickly moved beyond city hall, becoming part of a broader political debate over accountability, infrastructure spending and oversight at both the municipal and provincial levels.

The report has drawn scrutiny to how major infrastructure decisions are made and communicated, as well as how governments balance long-term maintenance against pressures to limit tax increases.

Lori Williams, an associate professor of policy studies at Mount Royal University, said infrastructure failures are often the result of difficult trade-offs that unfold over many years.

“The report actually highlights a number of concerns, primarily aging infrastructure and the need to invest in that,” Williams said.

She said governments often struggle to justify spending on maintenance compared with new projects that are more visible to voters.

“Maintaining what you’ve already got is not something that is particularly appealing or attention grabbing in an election campaign,” Williams said.

Williams said Calgary’s rapid growth has compounded those pressures, forcing elected officials to weigh competing demands for limited tax dollars.

“There have been a lot of demands for expenditures of taxpayer dollars,” she said.

She added that the report suggests key information about infrastructure risks was not consistently shared with council, raising questions about governance and oversight.

“Not all of that information was filtering up to city council,” Williams said.

Williams said the political fallout now extends beyond municipal politics, as provincial leaders weigh in and assign blame.

She notes that while responsibility is being debated, public frustration appears to be focused elsewhere.

“I think most Calgarians aren’t so much concerned with whose fault this was,” Williams said.

“They’re much more concerned with how it is going to be solved and how is this going to be managed in the long term.”