Calgary water restrictions to last up to five weeks longer as repairs drag

Calgary and its neighbouring cities will have to cut water consumption for the next three to five weeks after officials inspecting a busted pipeline found more troubling damage.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, in an update Friday afternoon, said officials discovered five more worrisome spots after inspecting the Bearspaw South Feedermain, which broke June 5. Calgary imposed water restrictions the next morning and last Saturday predicted service would return to normal in five to seven days, if all went well.

Friday’s extended timeline means the water restrictions will likely be in place during the Calgary Stampede, which runs July 5-14 and attracts thousands of visitors to the city. It is Alberta’s flagship festival and hotels sell out weeks in advance.

Nancy Mackay, Calgary’s water services director, said the city has asked some businesses to stop using water given its growing infrastructure woes.

“With today’s situation, we are now contacting some customers to ask them to stop some operations and some activities,” Ms. Mackay said, without detailing which industries and businesses are being targeted. The city can shut off water to some customers if they do not comply with Calgary’s request, she added.

“This would be a last resort and one we are prepared to take if need be.”

Calgary Emergency Management Agency chief Sue Henry said the Calgary Stampede was working on “contingency plans,” but said it is too early to predict how the water restrictions will affect the mega-event.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is travelling out of the country, on vacation, until June 24, according to her public itinerary.

Calgary, a city of 1.6 million people, and surrounding communities including Airdrie, Chestermere and Strathmore, have been under a combination of mandatory and voluntary water restrictions since the original rupture.

Officials reported Friday that water use has been ticking upward, higher than what the city had rationed.

Residents have been asked to cut their indoor water usage with measures such as shorter showers and fewer toilet flushes. Outdoor watering is banned, but Ms. Gondek suggested residents could collect rainwater in kiddie pools for non-potable uses.

“I am worried about our city and our surrounding municipalities. If our water usage continues to trend up and our water supply can’t keep up, the taps will run dry at some point,” she said Friday.

CEMA’s Ms. Henry said Friday that repairing the original break, plus addressing the five additional spots, will mean more time spent on repairs than originally thought.

“The pipe is not safe to bring into service without these repairs,” Ms. Henry said. “We cannot take the chance of further pipe breaks on the long-term sustainability of this pipe.”

Calgary used a robot to inspect the broken feedermain. After analyzing the information it gathered, the city’s experts said it was the “most dramatic and traumatic break of the feedermain they have ever seen,” Ms. Henry said. The pipeline is only at the halfway point in its expected 100-year life cycle.

Fixing the giant, seven-metre-long section of ruptured pipe consists of welding a replacement pipe into place, cleaning it and testing it. Its diameter varies from 1.5 metres to about 1.95 metres.

Outreach teams have been in touch with 7,000 businesses about reducing water use, Ms. Henry said.

Calgary’s infrastructure director, François Bouchard, said the “breakage of pre-stressed steel wires” was a significant contributing factor in the original failure. The wires are coiled within an inner layer of concrete pipe to provide structural stability to help the pipe manage high water pressure. It is normal for some of the wires to break as the pipe ages, but it becomes a problem as the number of breaks increases, he said.

Calgary has inspected about 4.3 kilometres of pipe, he said, and discovered five spots with significant breakage and in need of “critical and urgent” repair.

Some segments will be replaced and others will be reinforced, Mr. Bouchard said. If Calgary did not complete these repairs, the pipe would be at high risk of further catastrophic breaks.

“The risk is simply too high. We need to act immediately,” he said.

Calgary is draining water from another 300 metres of pipe for inspection, Mr. Bouchard said.

The Bearspaw South Feedermain normally services water for 60 per cent of Calgary, as well as residents in Airdrie, Chestermere and Strathmore.

Peter Brown, the mayor of Airdrie, which gets its water from Calgary, said reducing water usage by turning off taps while washing hands is a simple request.

“In Airdrie, we’re falling back a bit just as Calgary is, and we want to make sure and remind everyone to conserve water,” he said.

With a report from The Canadian Press.