‘Heavy strain’: Calgary water consumption rises Friday to 493 million litres

As crews work around the clock to repair the damaged water main on 16th Avenue, water usage climbed to unsustainable levels Saturday.

Calgary water consumption rose Friday, putting the city’s water resources under ‘heavy strain’ according to the city’s social media.

According to the City of Calgary, water use rose to 493 million litres Friday.

That was up 20 million litres from Thursday, when consumption was 473 million.

Chris Huston, Calgary’s manager for drinking water distribution, says the city needs to use below 485 million litres of water every day for several weeks due to Tuesday night’s water-main break.

“We still have an urgent need to reduce our water use so that we can make sure we all have enough while the feeder main is being repaired,” said Calgary emergency management agency chief Susan Henry. “We are asking everyone – regardless of what part of the city you are in, to help conserve water so that access to drinking water is preserved while we continue to make repairs on the feeder main.

“Taking simple steps can add up to make a difference.”

Mayor Jeromy Farkas also posted to social media Saturday morning.

“A new independent panel report into Calgary’s water system will be released soon; Council is currently waiting on its completion by the authors,” Farkas posted.

His post also provided links to past reports, a pipe investigation report and an executive summary and findings.

Friday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she blames past Calgary mayor -- and present Alberta NDP leader -- Naheed Nenshi for the pipe problems.

Smith said the city failed for years to check on the state of the troubled Bearspaw South Feeder Main, which ruptured this week for the second time in less than two years.

“Frustration doesn’t begin to describe what we’re seeing with what happened in Calgary,” Smith told an unrelated news conference Friday, noting the city had a higher rate of leakage from its water system for years.

“All of this should have been identified early so that now subsequent mayors are not having to deal with it.”

Nenshi, who was mayor from 2010 to 2021, said that “of course the inspections were always done” and that there were no major water main breaks in the city in the 20 years prior to the 2024 failure.

He called Smith’s accusation “total garbage.”

“This is very emblematic of this government. Rather than actually trying to help solve the problem or act as adults in an emergency, they lash out. They look for someone to blame and they look for political gain,” Nenshi said during a video news conference.

‘We will fix it for good’

At Saturday’s media update, Farkas responded to a question about Smith’s comments blaming the break on when Nenshi was mayor.

He thanked the premier and Calgary Liberal MP Corey Hogan for “being deeply engaged,” in the issue.

“We welcome the conversation (between all levels of government),” Farkas said. “If greater (federal and provincial) funding came to municipalities, we’d expect there would be greater (municipal) accountability.”

He said during his term as a councillor, he worked with Coun. Druh Farrell on a notice of motion to address the city’s leaky pipes but it didn’t go anywhere.

City of Calgary’s Michael Thompson, the general manager of infrastructure services, said he expects the current repairs to take around 14 days -- and that the city is looking elsewhere across the system to make sure there are no other problem areas.

He said the short-term fix is to repair the existing pipe and long-term, the plan is to install an almost six-kilometre-long steel line.

“As we’ve heard, this is a problem that has been in the making for generations,” Thompson said.

“We’ve relied too heavily on one piece of infrastructure to move the majority of our city’s water, and we need to replace that with a new pipe and really think about redundancy across our system.”

“We talked about that last year after we learned about this -- we’re focused on building redundancy across our system -- and we need to be looking at that as we go forward.”

Farkas said the city council was united in its determination to get it right this time.

“We will spare no expense to fix this – not just for today, not for tomorrow, but for the next 100 years," Farkas said.

“Under our council term, we will fix this and we will fix it for good.

“Our first budget adjustment cycle called for dedicated streams of tens of millions of dollars for brand new infrastructure maintenance funding. It also called for about a billion dollars of investment – not just specific to this, but elsewhere in the city," he said.

“We will do it faster and get it done right this time so that Calgarians will never have to worry about something so fundamental as clean, safe drinking water ever again, under our watch, for the next 100 years.”

A Boil Water Advisory remains in place for portions of Parkdale, Montgomery Point McKay and West Hillhurst neighbourhoods.

Residents can find information on water wagons and an updated map of the impacted area on calgary.ca.