Schulich professor says municipalities around the world are learning lessons from Calgary's 2024 water feeder main break

It was a long summer for many Calgarians as they grappled with the challenges of both a drought and water restrictions imposed after a catastrophic feeder main break.

The rupture happened on June 5, 2024, just four kilometres from the city’s primary water-treatment plant at Bearspaw, on a line that is responsible for nearly 60 per cent of Calgary’s potable water supply.

It led to closures at public pools and rinks, outdoor watering bans, and residents and businesses alike being told to scale back or stop using as much water as they could under a Stage 4 water restriction. Three-minute showers became a fact of life for many.

While some restrictions were lifted during the Calgary Stampede, the City was forced to temporarily put them back in place later in the summer after more faults were found during inspections near the original break.

A Schulich School of Engineering professor is hoping some insights will answer the questions about what happened and what other jurisdictions can learn from the ordeal.

Dr. Tricia Stadnyk, PhD, hopes her thoughts in her article, "Water Infrastructure Under the Microscope: Insights from Calgary’s Catastrophic Water Feeder Main Break," published recently in Water News Online, will help paint a picture of what transpired.

A need for more timely and clearer communication

As Mayor Jyoti Gondek and City representatives continue to field calls about what they can recommend for other communities, Stadnyk says several lessons should have been learned from last summer.

She says it starts with communication, as news about the rupture was slow to circulate and updates were often unclear.

“This led to confusion and anger from the citizens of Calgary as they were unclear of what was happening and what was expected of them, particularly local businesses,” wrote Stadnyk, who is the NSERC Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Hydrological Modelling.

When media reports surfaced of people washing their vehicles at car washes near the rupture, people began to question why they needed to conserve water in their homes.

Stadnyk says the frustrations could have been avoided had the City started daily news updates immediately after the break, instead of waiting more than a week, as they did.

Investment in prevention better than reactive repairs

One of the challenges around the water main break in Calgary was that it highlighted issues many municipalities face but often push off until something bad happens: early detection, maintenance and redundancy.

Stadnyk says addressing both requires investment, which is difficult for councils to grapple with when they are continually being asked to save as much money as possible.

“Investment of public dollars into maintaining utility infrastructure (primarily water and sewage) generates little interest from the public until an event such as Calgary’s feeder main failure occurs,” she said in her article. 

“Calgary’s misfortune has demonstrated that investment into monitoring, maintenance and rehabilitation of the unseen (buried) infrastructure must be a higher priority.”

Stadnyk, who is also a professor in the Faculty of Arts, says the redundancy of the Glenmore and Bearspaw water treatment plants “saved the city from complete disaster,” adding not every municipality has a secondary option like that. Even so, one reason why water restrictions were imposed city-wide was over concerns the Glenmore plant could have become overloaded.

She adds early investment might actually save money in the long term, as the projected cost to fix the break was estimated to be around $20-$25 million, which could have been spent over a longer period of time to make sure nothing catastrophic was around the corner.

Where do we go from here?

While most people did their part in lowering their usage, Stadnyk says “disaster fatigue” set in and people grew tired of conserving water.

Making things even more challenging was the summer heat, forcing the mayor to issue several critical warnings about the potential loss of water for firefighting efforts.

“This disaster, on the back of the drought in 2023-2024, has demonstrated that Calgarians – and perhaps all Canadians – must adopt better water-conservation practices in general,” Stadnyk wrote. “A significant and important discussion about grey water reuse for Canadian cities has since ensued, similar to other drought-prone, water-scarce regions of North America.”

Heading into next summer and beyond, Stadnyk hopes people are mindful of what they have been through and don’t immediately go back to the way things used to be.

“Hopefully, some valuable lessons on personal water consumption, societal and economic dependence on clean water and water insecurity have been learned and will be taken forward to improve Calgary’s water security and resiliency in the future,” she concluded. “Similar to COVID, we need to adopt a ‘new normal’ mindset and resist the temptation to go back to our wasteful lawn-watering ways.”

Learn more about the City of Calgary’s Water Efficiency Plan.