Calgary mayor pleads with residents to keep saving water as repairs progress

Raw: Calgary water main afternoon update, June 27 Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek and other city officials give an update on the critical water shortage on the afternoon of Thursday, June 27, 2024.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek issued a stern warning to residents on Thursday morning about curbing their water use, saying consumption levels have continued to creep up over the past several days.

"Calgary, we are well on our way back to regular water availability, but we're not quite there yet," she said during her daily morning update.

"Some folks are starting to get impatient."

The city has been under water restrictions for three weeks. Crews have finished repairs and began filling its feeder main, the first step in fully restoring water service.

"Water conservation is needed so we don't put too much stress on the water system while it's being prepared to return to service," Gondek said.

"Some of you seem to be done with efforts to save water, but we need to keep doing more."

Calgarians used 473 million litres of water on Wednesday, something that Gondek called a "steady and concerning trend."

According to the city, the daily threshold water usage to maintain critical services like firefighting and hospitals is 480 million litres.

"It's hard to watch that, especially after seeing we were doing a week of an excellent job of conserving water."

Gondek says progress is being made on restoring the city's treated water supply from the Bearspaw facility.

"The work to fill the feeder main began last night, which means it's going to take about 14 million litres of water to fill the pipe and that means about 36 hours," she said, adding that flushing the pipe will take additional time.

"There is then testing of the water and stabilizing the pipe to get it back up to the pressure it needs to be."

16 Avenue to reopen Friday

Gondek said the repaving work is mostly complete and roads have been cleared to reopen on Friday.

"You will be able to use that roadway but please be prepared for a few bumps. We're missing just a little bit of pavement."

Gondek said that if everything goes well over the next few days, water service is expected to be fully restored by July 1.