No drop in Calgarians' water usage despite request from city after water main break

A daytime after officials number one asked Calgarians to cut down their irrigate habituate in the wake of Tuesday’s catastrophic water main break, the city says it is not seeing any real reduction in usage. 

That means the city is “still very much in the red zone,” Mayor Jeromy Farkas said during a update Thursday, with higher than sustainable demand on the system.

Typically, the city has about 600 million litres of water stored underground on a daily basis. That dropped to 459 million litres after the break of the Bearspaw south feeder main. 

While those numbers rebounded slightly, more water needs to be saved so that supply is not depleted in the event of another incident, said Michael Thompson, the city’s infrastructure services general manager.

Calgarians have been asked to reduce their water consumption wherever possible, by taking showers for three minutes or less, limiting toilet flushing and running dishwashers and washing machines only when full. 

Each minute shaved off a shower could potentially save six to eight litres of water, said Chris Huston, the city’s manager of the drinking water distribution system. 

He said if everyone in the city could reduce their water intake by 10-30 litres daily, it would significantly help in reaching the target usage faster.  

He said the goal is to have the broken section of the pipe repaired by two weeks from when the break occurred.

City officials are also calling on businesses to reduce their water usage where possible, suggesting restaurants refill patron’s water glasses only by request, or using bottled water. 

“I know this is not how anyone wanted to begin in January, and we understand the impact that this has had on your daily routine,” said Sue Henry, Calgary Emergency Management Agency chief.

“Reducing water use right now is critical.” 

Parts of Montgomery, West Hillhurst, Parkdale and Point McKay remain under a boil water advisory.

City officials said they still do not know what led to this week’s failure, and Huston said they “can’t guarantee 100 per cent” that another break would not happen. 

After 2024’s catastrophic break, the city began plans to replace the Bearspaw south feeder main with a new steel pipe — a project already on an accelerated timeline that the city says will now be sped up even more, given the events of this week. 

In the interim, the plan was to use an acoustic fibre optic monitoring system to listen for the sound of any wire snaps, indicating the break of a reinforcing wire inside the pipe. Officials would be able to identify spots where multiple snaps were heard, and perform emergency repairs . 

But no snaps were heard in the two months leading up to Tuesday’s break, according to Thompson.

And since monitoring began, only 18 snaps were detected across the entire feeder main, compared to 20 snaps heard in July and August in 2024. 

“We thought the pipe was stable and operating in good condition at that point. We knew the pipe wasn’t great, we knew it needed more work, but we hadn’t heard any wire snaps,” said Thompson. 

Farkas said ultimately, the Bearspaw south feeder main has reached the end of its reliable lifecycle. 

“We can keep patching it, we can keep reacting, but it will continue to fail until there is an alternative built,” said Farkas.

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