‘We will solve this’: Calgary mayor pledges new water system for the city

Almost a week after the Bearspaw feeder main burst for the second time, Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said work will not stop until a new water main is built.

That means water conservation measures will need to remain in place well into the future.

“Yesterday, we lived in a world where water was something we could take for granted,” Farkas said Monday.

“Today, we are living in a new reality. As mayor, public safety is my responsibility, and I owe you Calgarians absolute clarity about what is happening and why.”

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As crews deal with the immediate situation of the broken main, Farkas said the city is undertaking possibly the largest infrastructure project in its history.

“We are replacing the pipe that carries the heart of Calgary’s water system – the beating heart that is sick and terminally ill. In simple terms, we are transplanting Calgary’s beating heart,” he said.

That means water conservation measures will need be needed for a while, he said.

“I know this will take effort. It means changing daily habits, but these changes matter and when we all do our part, it adds up,” he said.

Farkas says his entire council is committed to a solution.

“We will solve this, once and for all, in this council term,” he said. “We will solve this for the next century.”

Water use up on Sunday

Over the past 24 hours, 510 million litres of water was used, above the level required to replenish Calgary’s reserves.

“This affects the health of our entire distribution system, our plants and their ability to produce treated water, our underground storage, which needs to be refilled each night and our ability to move water around the city to anyone who needs it,” said Sue Henry, Calgary Emergency Management Agency chief.

Henry said Calgarians should keep showers to under three minutes, flush toilets only when necessary and only run washing machines or dishwashers when they are full.

Water conservation methods like this will make sure water is available for other critical purposes like fighting fires.

“A single fire can use 4.5 million litres of water and draw down a storage location by 25 per cent. This is the same amount that 26,000 Calgarians would use in a day,” she said.

No warning of Dec. 30 break

The broken section of the Bearspaw feeder main has been removed.

Officials say it will now be taken to a city facility to determine what went wrong.

With the section of pipe out of the way, Calgary’s general manager of infrastructure services, Michael Thompson, says work will begin on inspecting the sections near the break to determine if there are other issues that need to be dealt with.

This will be done by both crews and robots sent into the empty pipe, he said.

The same process was done during the repair work on the pipe following the 2024 break, which identified sections that needed to be reinforced.

“We used a technique called concrete encasement to complete the majority of these repairs,” Thompson said, adding this method placed a steel-reinforced box around problem sections.

At that time, a fibre-optic warning system was also installed to provide real-time data on the pipe’s integrity to warn crews if something is wrong as soon as possible.

Officials were also monitoring the millions of wires stretched around the pipe, which would break and provide additional warnings.

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Thompson said on Dec. 30, 2025, no wire breaks were heard two weeks ahead of the break.

“We need to change our monitoring and operating of this pipe going forward,” Thompson said.

If everything goes well with testing and no further issues are discovered, it’s expected the pipe should be replaced by the beginning of next week.

Additional work will need to be done before the pipe can be put back into service.

A formal report on the 2024 break is expected to be presented to city council this month, which will contain recommendations Farkas says will be acted upon immediately.

“Calgarians will get clear answers and real action,” he said.