Calgary's water crisis is a 'wake-up call' for every city in Canada, warn infrastructure experts

Calgary, a city of about 1.6 million people, has been cut off from more than half of its water supply since June 5.

The situation, caused by a major water main break, has plunged the city into a State of Emergency as its residents remain under water-use restrictions expected to last until at least July 5.

All outdoor watering is banned and people have been urged to reduce toilet flushes, take shorter showers and do fewer loads of laundry and dishes. The mayor has encouraged employers to let people work from home, saying it could save people a morning shower and having "to worry about what they look or smell like."

Some schools have restricted the use of water fountains and are relying on porta-potties, gardeners are collecting rainwater, and city crews have been draining swimming pools to use that water to clean its bridges and for other construction needs.

To quote Mayor Jyoti Gondek, it is both "frustrating" and a "real threat." Both she and civil engineering and infrastructure experts say that if this can happen in Calgary, it can happen anywhere.

Infrastructure is aging across Canada, and even though cities do a "pretty good job" of trying to manage a huge network of underground pipes, there often aren't enough resources to repair and replace them as needed, Kerry Black, an associate professor in civil engineering at the University of Calgary, told CBC News. 

"The reality is, we have a huge infrastructure deficit and need a lot of money to repair infrastructure, so something like this could happen in any other city, and in fact, water mains break all the time, just not to this scale," said Black, who is also the Canada Research Chair in integrated knowledge, engineering and sustainable communities.

"I think every other city realized, based on what happened here, they are just as susceptible."

In 2019, a report card compiled by a number of engineering, construction and municipality associations in Canada found that 30 per cent of water infrastructure in Canada — such as water mains and sewers — are in fair, poor or very poor condition. The report noted that a majority of the infrastructure that Canadians rely on every day is more than 20 years old. 

In 2022, Statistics Canada reported that "a significant portion of linear water infrastructure was over 50 years old in 2020." The agency said that close to one-fifth of water, sewer and stormwater pipes were reaching the end of their useful life since they were built prior to 1970.

"Unlike most public infrastructure, water, sewer and stormwater pipes are hidden underground, making it challenging to assess conditions," Statistics Canada warned. It also said that 12 per cent of the length of pipes in Canada were in "unknown" condition in 2020.

We should be concerned, Matti Siemiatycki, the director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto, told CBC's Front Burner Friday.

"It should be a wake-up call that we need to have plans in place and that we need to have consistent long-term investment," he said.

Much of the infrastructure in Canada was built in what's often referred to as the "golden era" of the 1960s and '70s, Siemiatycki said, during a time of population growth, prosperity and investments. We pulled back in the 1980s and '90s, mainly for financial reasons, he explained. And now, we're starting to see the impacts as investment hasn't kept pace.