Calgary moving ahead with water fluoridation, expected completion in early 2025

A glass is filled with water from a kitchen sink.

The City of Calgary is currently commissioning its upgraded water treatment equipment with plans to reintroduce fluoride into the water supply on track for early 2025.

Calgary's work comes as some cities, including Montreal, recently voted to remove fluoride from their water system.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services, has also said he would recommend the removal of fluoride from water across America.

"The city is completing necessary infrastructure upgrades to Calgary’s two water treatment plants with commissioning of equipment underway," reads a statement from Calgary's water services department.

Fluoridation of Calgary's water supply is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter next year. The project has been delayed several times and costs have escalated since Calgarians voted in favour of fluoridation in a plebiscite during the municipal election in 2021.

Calgary has conducted several plebiscites on the fluoride matter, in 1999, 1989, 1971, 1966, 1961 and 1957.

The cost to reintroduce fluoride into Calgary's water system includes $28 million for treatment plant upgrades and annual maintenance and operating costs of up to $1 million.

In April, University of Calgary medicine professor James. A Dickinson told CTV News the rates of dental treatments under anesthesia have risen in Calgary since the removal of fluoridation in its water system.

"We are concerned about avoidable and potentially life-threatening disease, pain, suffering, misery and expense experienced especially by very young children and their families due to dental decay," Dickinson said in an emailed statement at the time.

"In just eight years after fluoridation ended in 2011, the need for intravenous antibiotic therapy by children to avoid death by infection rose 700 per cent at the Alberta Children’s Hospital."

According to Dickinson, a University of Alberta study shows that for children under five years old, the rate of dental treatments under anesthesia doubled from 22 per 100,000 in 2010-11 to 45 per 100,000 in 2018-19.

With files from CTV News Calgary's Brendan Ellis