The Current - Pipe nightmare in Calgary

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Calgary is dealing with a busted water main… again. One of the city's major water lines recently burst for the second time in 18 months. Crews are scrambling to fix it but it's shone a spotlight on the city's infrastructure issues. Plus Calgary is not alone, other Canadian cities use similar pipes and could be on a clock for a burst of their own. 

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the great Canadians. Oh, here you are. You're here and we're here. No matter what race you were, what color you were, what religion you were, what language you spoke, you watched Mr. Dressup. The tickle trunk was this magical like Pandora's Box. I'm talking about Captain Dressup. Mr. Dressup, the magic of make-believe. You made me what I am today.

You know that. Watch free on CBC Gem. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It has been a rough start to the new year in Calgary. For over a week, that city has been dealing with a major water main break. When the pipe burst on the 30th of December, it caused widespread flooding in a neighborhood in the city's northwest and trapped motorists in their cars as the water flowed around them.

Saude Abasi was out delivering pizzas in the area and got caught in the gushing water. I was the first guy that who responded before the fire department showed up and water was coming really fast. It was up until my chest so it was pretty deep and you know

it was shivery cold vather that night. So I managed to get people out of their cars and took them to the safety, carrying them on my shoulders, right? So there was few people that I was managed to get them to the side. Kids ladies and

And I don't know how I managed to do that, but I think it was just my adrenaline that kicked in my body and that protected me from the shivery cold. Since those icy rescues in the shivery cold, crews have been working to repair the pipe. The mayor of Calgary, Jeremy Farkas, says the water feeder main is a ticking time bomb and will have to be replaced. In the meantime, he's urging people to cut back on their water use, calling it a crisis situation. We are now living in a new reality, a new reality of water conservation. a new reality where using less water is part of everyday life, a new reality of truly valuing this life-enabling resource, a new reality that lasts until our system is secure

and until our neighbors are safe. For Calgarians, it is an all-too-familiar situation. There was a rupture on that same pipe in that same area back in 2024. It's kind of like a reality check. Like we have to be able to conserve our water just overall. But at the same time, I feel like I will get kind of tired of it after a while, for sure. It's no fun, but what happened is happen. We need to fix some, we need the government to fix something permanently instead of repair, repair, repair, repair.

Yeah, well, it sucks. Tax is going to something like that that could have been prevented. Now a new report says Calgary. water woes were in fact preventable and that the city knew about the issues that led to the burst pipe since 2004. This report is calling for an overhaul of the water system. Siegfried Kiefer led the independent review panel who put together the report on the same water main after it broke 18 months ago. He was previously the president and CEO of Canadian Utilities Limited at Alberta's Energy Utility ATCO. Sigfried Kiefer is in Calgary.

Good morning, Matt. How are you this morning? I'm well. You heard. heard the mayor call this a ticking time bomb and you have used the same language that sounds bad yes we're really in a bad situation where a six kilometer section of a pc pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe has deteriorated to the point that it is unreliable in service unfortunately it's the main artery delivering up to 60 percent of calgary's potable water to its citizens and as such we are in in a bad position of having to utilize a piece of infrastructure that is you know i'm going to say not up to the task given its current condition how likely is it that it's going to blow again in the near future well it's very hard to put a number on it in terms

of a probability but uh you know based on assessments that have been done the pipe has seen deterioration along its entire length, this entire six-kilometer section. And despite using, I'm going to say, kit gloves to operate it very carefully and avoid any pressure spikes, we are subject to weather fluctuations in Calgary that will see frost come and go into the ground and create stress on the pipe. We are seeing a situation where wire snaps, which the wires that wrap this pipe are what give it its structural strength. These wires have been embrittled as a result of toxicity in the soil surrounding the pipe.

And whilst we can hear these wires snap, the wire snaps are not always predictive of a failure in that area. And so the problem being that there is no real warning that will naturally occur. And so we are in this unpredictable situation. Your report says that people knew this, that the city knew that the time bomb was ticking for close to 20 years, right? That there were inspections called for in 2017, 2020, and 22, and none were done. How do you understand that? Yeah, it's really difficult to understand what was going on in the minds of management and administration to have a piece of absolutely critical infrastructure. But I would say they somehow convinced themselves that an outage on this line was unlikely and deferred what would be thought of as rudimentary inspections to ensure that they understood the exact condition of the pipe.

The incident that happened in 2004 was on similar vintage pipe located in the McKnight area of Calgary. and out of that there was lots of recommendations, including increased inspections of that type of pipe wherever it existed in the network. Unfortunately, again, those recommendations were not acted on over the course of the ensuing 21 years or 20 years. You could imagine a lot of people in Calgary are wondering who's to blame for something like this.

Yeah, and our report did extensive research into you know how the city documented the problem what decisions were taken the the failures as we see them would have resulted from kind of three key elements the the risk and integrity processes of the city are not as complete and robust as you would expect for operating critical infrastructure the the management structure and accountability framework for management is not as clear and does not give i'm going to say risk-based decision-making authority to the appropriate level of management and and as a result difficult decisions were deferred rather than dealt with and there's no true knowledgeable governance and oversight body that would would be in a position

to challenge management on these deferrals and decisions to delay, really determining what the state of affairs was with that pipe. How much, I mean, we're talking about this one stretch of pipe, but how much of the water infrastructure in Calgary is in a similar state needs to be replaced or at the very least inspected? Yeah, so this 6-kilometer section is what we believe to be the weakest section of this style of pipe in the city. The city has used pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe in other areas,

but it's of different vintages. So this 70s vintage of pipe has been identified, you know, as early as the 90s as having some flaws in the materials that were used to produce the pipe. And so the industry as a whole has been aware of this problem. You know, many other municipalities, Montreal, Halifax, Winnipeg have all had the same style of pipe installed in their networks, but have been more aggressive in replacing, repairing, or adding resilience, you know, encasing the pipe to provide additional strength. They've been more aggressive in those programs than Calgary has. And so how aggressive does Calgary need to be?

terms of replacing this pipeline. Again, I'm going to go back to the ticking time bomb. If there's a ticking time bomb underneath my house, I'm probably going to deal with it before it blows. So how quickly do they need to deal with this? We think it's the number one project in the city, and that is to get a steel line replacement for this six-kilometer section of pipe. We're recommending that they enact,

I'm going to say, sort of crisis procurement and contractor securement to action getting this pipe installed as quickly as humanly and safely possible and you know we've put a deadline of kind of 12 to 14 months of getting that work completed in our recommendations you know municipalities have tended to take longer periods of time to do this type of work due to the need to plan and notify communities and businesses along the route etc i just we don't feel that they we have the luxury of that time given the instability of the pipe sounds expensive to do it that quickly well um you know surprisingly i don't think it would be ultimately that much more expensive than doing it at a slower pace

the estimated cost for the line is in that 250 million dollar range um but we're looking at you know, a water system that is valued at probably more than $3 billion. So the cost of not doing it is going to be even more? Oh, absolutely. If you can imagine not being able to deliver the average daily demand for water to the systems of Calgary has some huge implications for businesses in the city and for individuals in terms of lifestyle and convenience. Sirfrey, good to speak with you about this.

very much. You bet. Thank you, Matt. Siegfried Kiefer led the independent review on the main water pipeline in Calgary, the pipeline that burst and led to flooding and those rescues, as we heard, and a lot of inconvenience and pain and concern for people in that city. He's also a former executive at Alberta's Energy Utility, Atco. We did ask to speak, I should mention, with the mayor of Calgary, Jeremy Farkas, but he was not made available to speak with us this morning. The W.HL is back for the third season of heart-stopping women's hockey. And this season, there are two new teams looking to make their mark on the ice,

the Seattle Torrent and Vancouver Golden Eyes. When the world's best women's hockey players face off, anything can happen. Will the Minnesota Frost achieve a three-beat? Will a new team take home the trophy? There's only one way to find out. Watch the PWH for free on CBCJM. Carrie Black has been watching the story. closely. She's an associate professor, Canada research chair at the University of Calgary School of

Engineering. Carrie, good morning to you. Good morning. What do you make of this report? Suggesting in some ways that the city ignored signs of failure or the possibility of failure for a couple of decades. Well, I think it's important that people understand that when you approach infrastructure, it's from a risk-based perspective. So it's very common for you to prioritize things that are very risky and are about to happen very quickly. The way that you make those decisions is also based on shared practices or best practices from other cities and municipalities and what we know at the time. Certainly, what we know 20 years ago is different than what we know.

10 years ago is different than what we know today. And so that constantly is updated and evaluated and helps us make different decisions. I think it's really important that people understand that it's not, and I think if you really dive into the report, it's not a case of people actively ignoring recommendations. it's a word that used in the report is called deprioritization, which means if it's not super urgent, then I'm going to prioritize the things that really are urgent. I guess the one question is,

how do you know how urgent it is if you aren't doing the inspections in the first place? Well, it's not to say that there's no inspections being done, and I think there is calling into question when some of these inspections were going to be done. When we go back to a year and a half ago, that section of pipe was due for inspection after the break. And so it's not that it was completely ignored.

There was an asset management plan done. It just hadn't come up yet. And it's not to say that you can't do more, but people need to understand more inspections cost more money. More money means more taxes. And that means it's being directed away from other high priority items that the city is also grappling with. What do you make of the political response to this?

The Premier of Alberta, Daniel Smith, has said that she's considering more provincial oversight of the city's water system. She blamed the former mayor of Calgary, the current leader of the NDP, Nahed Nenshi, for the problem with the pipe, he said that her comments were, in his words, total garbage. What do you make of the political response to what's going on right now? Yeah. And, you know, a political response to infrastructure challenges to me is a complete waste of time

because every single party across every single line has always found a way to ignore core infrastructure challenges. There's a reason that Canada has an infrastructure deficit in the $300 billion range, if not more. And that's because no one's elected on putting in a new pipe. No one's elected on making sure that your water costs a bit more so that we can make sure we can maintain it. It's not something that draws voters out and it's arguably not something that most Canadians even care about until it actually bursts. You know, going back to your comment earlier, if I have a ticking time bomb under my house, I'm probably going to address it. The reality is most people aren't.

You're not going to address something until it actually becomes an issue. I think the role of the province is on setting regulations and standards and providing guidance and support, but more importantly, resources. And that's really where the attention is. Can we talk about that infrastructure deficit? Because we're talking here about Calgary. But to your point, this is in some ways a national issue. It's been pegged close to $300 billion, $270 billion at the very least. Why does that exist?

Is it because it's, for politicians, it's sexier to go and cut the ribbon. at a new train station rather than talk about a pipe that's buried underground that nobody sees. Absolutely. And you saw that just recently with some of the major announcements of large-scale infrastructure projects across our provinces in partnership with the federal government. It is much more exciting to promise a new pipeline than it is to fix an existing water pipeline. And that's always been the case. And so we are more inclined to put money towards exciting projects, capital projects,

than we are to putting in operation and maintenance dollars. into our infrastructure. And that is a huge problem because the more people don't see or value this core infrastructure, the more we ignore it. If we ignore it, there's no chance politicians want to make a decision around something that people don't care about. So when $270 or $300 billion is not being spent on infrastructure, that that's the amount that could be spent, what's not being done and what's vulnerable because that deficit exists? Yeah, a great question. And it's think about, you know, your roadway outside your house. If you've got a pothole and you're sometimes patching it and not necessarily addressing the core issue, over time, you're going to need to rip up that entire road.

When you're able to maintain, you know, that roadway outside of your home regularly, then over time I can keep it lasting longer. So what we have is not enough annually going into the operation and maintenance of our infrastructure, which just piles up over time. And then it results in instead of us, you know, potentially a lower cost replacement over time or sorry, repair. I now have to do a full-scale replacement, and that's what we're seeing across every single infrastructure asset. And make no mistake, this has happened in Calgary, but this could have happened in any other city across North America. And so what should the leaders of those cities across North America be doing so that they aren't dealing with what Calgary is dealing with right now?

I think it's important that decision makers and politicians really truly understand how we do business and infrastructure, how we prioritize, how we have to make tough. decisions, how we are also briefing up to them to give them information on what they need to be tackling. I think all of those municipalities are going to be looking at Calgary once again. They already were. Many of those municipalities look to Calgary as an example of how to do public works well. And so I think they have to look at themselves and reevaluate how they're prioritizing their infrastructure. But you've used this phrase in Siegfried used it as well, tough decisions. What are those tough decisions that elected officials are going to have to put in front

of the people who put them in office? Well, think about all of the different areas in the city that are struggling right now. We've got, you know, maybe you've got recreational facilities that need major investments. Maybe your schools need new HVAC systems. Maybe we're having some significant roadway challenges in some parts of the city. I now have a matrix of decisions. What am I going to prioritize that has, for politicians, the biggest bang for your buck, but also from a public health perspective, which is what water infrastructure is.

public health tool, how am I going to make sure that I also keep that at the forefront? So it's normal for water mains to break. It's normal for infrastructure to see some challenges. And I have a matrix of decisions that I have to figure out what's going to be the top priority. And for, you know, city councils and mayors, those are tough decisions because choosing one thing, unless you can increase your revenue, means saying no to something else. Well, the revenue seems to be key. One of those tough decisions also going to be telling people, this is going to cost you money, that we may have to increase your taxes a little bit to try to pay for the thing so that we aren't paying for it down the line when the pipe bursts.

Exactly. It means paying more for our water. We pay very little for our water and wastewater right now, and that is a huge problem. And it's not unprecedented. The city of Toronto increased their water rates because it was operating in a deficit, which most municipalities for their public work, so things like water, wastewater, they're operating in a deficit, which means they don't have enough money to run the programs that they need to run. And so increasing water rates is going to be a reality for Canadians, decreasing water consumption, and then some infusions of dollars from a province and federal government. And we've seen what they can do in a short period of time if they need to mobilize money. But they're going to infuse that into those

unsexy projects of water repair, wastewater line repairs. I have to let you go. But knowing what you know, do you think it's realistic that politicians are going to focus on the unsexy rather than on the thing that gets the headlines and gets them on the radio or the television? Hey, I've been trying myself, so I think we all have to keep doing the good fight. But I think that's why it's important that people also with this understanding go into politics and become decision makers because we need people who really get core issues making some of these decisions. Kerry, thank you very much. Good to talk to you again. Thanks for having me.

Kerry Black is an associate professor, Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary's School of Engineering. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.