‘No guarantee’ Bearspaw South Feeder Main will not break again: City of Calgary

More water restrictions will be part of the 'new reality of water usage' warned Mayor Jeromy Farkas, as the city provided an update Monday on the rupture of a major water main.

Residents of Calgary are “living in a new reality of water usage,” warned Mayor Jeromy Farkas as city officials provided an update Monday on repairs to a major water main that ruptured last week near 16 Avenue and Sarcee Trail in the city’s northwest.

The break in the Bearspaw South Feeder Main, which normally supplies about 60 per cent of the city’s drinking water, flooded several busy streets, forced emergency crews to rescue more than a dozen people from their vehicles, left 2,000 homes and businesses temporarily without water and resulted in boil water advisories being issued for 3,000 people in the area.

Since then, the city has had to rely on the much smaller Glenmore Water Treatment Plant to supply the bulk of the city’s water, which is operating at close to three times its normal winter capacity.

The rupture of the Bearspaw Feeder Main happened just a year and a half after a similar break in the same area prompted months of water restrictions, tens of millions of dollars in emergency repairs and forced the city to launch an independent review of the entire aging water system that Farkas called “a ticking time bomb underneath our streets.”

“Yesterday, we lived in a world where water was something that we could take for granted,” said Farkas, during Monday’s update. “Yesterday, water was something that most of us didn’t even think about. We turned on the tap. We ran the dishwasher. We took a shower, and we moved on with our day. Today, that has changed.”

The city’s general manager of infrastructure services, Michael Thompson, said repair crews were able to remove the damaged section of pipe from the ground on Sunday, and it and other nearby sections of the watermain are being closely examined.

A video shared by the city on social media shows a severely damaged section of pipe being pulled from the ground by city crews.

“Crews are now inspecting the pipe in the ground using both human and robotic inspection methods,” said Thompson.  “Once the pipe inspection is complete, we will start installing the repair section of new pipe. If everything goes well, we are planning to have the repair complete and the pipe operational by early next week.”