Could Calgary’s water crisis happen in other Canadian cities? A Globe analysis paints a stark picture

Nearly one-quarter of drinking water pipes in Canada’s largest cities are near the end of their useful life, raising the prospect of enormous repair bills for cash-strapped local governments.

The state of the infrastructure that delivers the country’s water – and the billions needed to inspect, maintain and replace it – has come under scrutiny since a major pipe broke in Calgary, forcing consumption restrictions for a month in Alberta’s largest city until service was restored last week.

The Globe and Mail examined Canada’s big-city water systems and found that information about this crucial but largely invisible asset was incomplete and inconsistent. But what could be gleaned through surveying the country’s 10 largest cities and analyzing data from Statistics Canada painted a stark picture of aging water systems in municipalities that are falling behind on maintaining and replacing them.

In Hamilton, two-fifths of transmission pipes, the bigger ones, are in poor or very poor condition. Winnipeg has more than twice as many water main breaks per length of pipe as the North American average.

Toronto is $2-billion behind on the spending needed to keep its system in good shape. In Vancouver, nearly a quarter of the drinking water supply network is in poor or very poor condition.

But it is hard even to get an accurate picture of the state of Canada’s water systems. Cities didn’t always provide full information, and often measured and tracked things in different ways. Some water agencies are opaque in their dealings with the public.

As well, all cities have limited ability to assess accurately the condition of their pipes. In Calgary, where the city reported that all of its big pipes were in good or very good condition, the one that ruptured this spring hadn’t been physically inspected in a decade.

The failure of Calgary’s large-diameter pipe, known as the Bearspaw South Feedermain, brought attention to the critical importance of a reliable supply, something developed-world residents tend to take for granted, until it’s not there.

“To me, it is amazing that these systems last as long as they do and we get clear water most of the time,” said Bryan Karney, a University of Toronto civil engineering professor.

While there was relatively little of the type of pipe identified in Calgary’s catastrophic break last month, the water pipes serving Canada’s biggest cities break thousands of times each year. Though most aren’t as dramatic as Calgary’s rupture, decades-old infrastructure is coming to the end of its life, putting pressure on cities to fix up old pipes, even as they build new ones to serve growing populations.

“We’ve got really aging infrastructure in all of our cities that is 50 to 100 years old that needs replacement – and we put it off,” said Robert Haller, executive director of the Canadian Water & Wastewater Association, which advocates the federal government on behalf of municipal water agencies.

“It’s almost like gambling. Each year, you roll the dice, and you hope you’ll get another year out of your infrastructure. But at some point, you have to replace it. It’s always cheaper to plan a replacement than to let it collapse.”

The most recent Statscan data is found in a federal infrastructure survey, dating to 2020 and based on self-reporting by the country’s municipalities, and presents an unsettling picture of water systems.

Nationally, the average remaining lifespan of the country’s pipes is going down. Nearly one-fifth of the pipes across Canada were installed before 1970 and, according to Statscan, are reaching the end of their useful life. In nine of Canada’s 10 biggest cities – Montreal is not included in the survey – the situation is worse: 23.9 per cent of pipes date to the 1960s or earlier.

The survey also asked cities about the state of their pipes, revealing a wide range of conditions. However, while age is relatively easy to track, the analyses behind city assessments are limited.

“They do some sampling, if you will, they might expose a section of pipe, they might even take a core sample out of it, they might even take a section out of it, evaluate it,” said Troy Vassos, a University of British Columbia adjunct professor and a technical director for Integrated Sustainability, an engineering firm.

“You can’t do that for all pipe, so they make some general averaging assumptions on the rest of the pipe and the infrastructure. And from that, they come up with their ratings. But that’s just an estimate.”

This appears to be what happened in Calgary, where the failed pipe was 49 years into what was expected to be a 100-year lifespan. Modelling based on the pipe’s age, material and operating pressures did not suggest that a physical inspection was required, according to city official François Bouchart.

“There was no indication that the section of pipe was being stressed,” he told reporters.

Physical inspections require pipes to be dug up and are costly and intrusive, although modelling does not preclude a possible failure, Prof. Karney noted.

“Most medical tests are keyed to age and lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a heart attack when you are young. Just less likely,” he said.

Acoustic sensors installed this spring picked up no alarming signals, suggesting this was a sudden catastrophic failure and not a gradual degradation, Calgary officials say. “Pigging” – floating a device loaded with sensors down this pipe – was scheduled, but for the coming winter.

“How do you test it for a long period of time? You put it in place and cross your fingers,” Mr. Vassos said.

“That’s another reason that Calgary is of interest to everybody … is this an indication of problems that other large cities are going to start facing?”

The scale of Canada’s urban water systems is vast. Toronto, Montreal and Calgary alone have enough pipe to stretch from one side of the country to the other and back.

Equally vast are the costs associated with this infrastructure. Toronto’s overall water network is valued at $87-billion, and industry standards call for investing 2 per cent of total value annually in the system.

Over the last decade, the city has spent $8.6-billion on upkeep, considerably less than that 2-per-cent target. It is projecting that it will need to double its investment in the next decade.

Other cities are facing their own upkeep dilemmas. Vancouver spokesperson Fiona Hughes said that “even with steadily increasing renewal rate, the portion of pipe assets in poor condition will increase over the next 10 years before stabilizing.”

In recent years, cities have become more fiscally rigorous when it comes to their water systems. This has not been painless.

Under David Miller, mayor of Toronto from 2003 to 2010, the city boosted water rates by 9 per cent annually for years in a row. Edmonton hived off water provision to a corporation, EPCOR, that makes money for the city but doesn’t provide the transparency of a public agency.

Larger cities also now have asset management plans that help determine which parts of the infrastructure need to be replaced in what order. In theory, this allows looming problems to be addressed before they become crises.

But even with these changes, the sheer scale of the money needed is beyond the reach of municipalities. Raising water rates too high becomes politically impossible, and risks making a necessity of life unaffordable.

At the same time, municipalities and provinces regularly clash over funding needs.

In Alberta, after the provincial government last month announced a $4.3-billion surplus, Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi complained that this money had been accrued on the back of municipalities and that funding for infrastructure was inadequate.

Quebec Premier François Legault had to apologize this spring after responding to funding requests by saying, “I’ve been in politics long enough to know that mayors find it easier to go begging in Quebec City rather than tidy up their own finances.”

Asked this week about support for fixing city water systems, the federal government and the governments of some of the biggest provinces pointed to recent or promised investments – money that falls well short of the identified needs.

The amount of new housing being built also creates its own pressure. There is a limited amount of financing and labour available to split between the installation of water infrastructure in new neighbourhoods and the maintenance of such infrastructure in established areas.

Water distribution systems, along with sewers and stormwater drains, are part of the buried infrastructure of a municipality. The infrastructure is mostly visible in its absence.

But that absence can make modern city life untenable. In Britain, a foul reek from The Thames in 1858 – so vile it was dubbed the Great Stink – emptied Parliament and prompted vast new engineering works in London, then the biggest city in the world. Last month, Calgary’s ruptured pipe sparked shower and laundry restrictions that brought viscerally to the foreground how much residents rely on free-flowing water.

“People don’t really think about it,” said Daniel Henstra, a University of Waterloo political scientist whose fields of research include governance and critical infrastructure resilience.

“You fill up a glass of water and you drink it. But until there’s a big disruption like we’ve just seen in Calgary, when you realize both how important the service is.”

As a result, water infrastructure can struggle to find political backers. Opening a new transit line makes commuters happy. Replacing a water main will make it more reliable, but it might leave residents with the sense that service remains the same.

In Calgary, crisis has had a way of focusing attention. But even before water restrictions were eased last week, there were signs the public was moving on.

University of Calgary assistant engineering professor Kerry Black was doubtful her city’s water troubles would lead to a new public understanding of the importance of pipes and other infrastructure.

“What you’re going to see is, as soon as that pipe’s replaced, water consumption and use is going to go back to normal,” she said. “And other cities aren’t going to be as sensitive to it until it happens to them.”

With a report from Frances Bula