Who would have thought that massive expansion with incredibly hard water and no improvements for 40 years would bring about infrastructure failures?
Pipes and mains have a life expectancy. Maintenance and upgrades are reasonable but municipalities have been putting them off.
rocktheboatlikeA1eye on
Didn’t Calgary plunder their emergency fund to artificially deflate their property tax increase? The province better not step in to help Calgary again. They vote conservative, they should be fiscally responsible.
Albertan tax payers are going to give yet another hand out to Calgarians.
WashingMachineBroken on
I thought pipes and pipelines were supposed to be our whole thing. We’re really fumbling the bag over here
YYCandback on
I’ll be waiting for the exact same amount of blame Gondek got for the last one as Farkas will for this. Not holding my breath
silverslayer on
Almost got through 2025 without one. Here’s to better luck in 2026.
kuributt on
AGAIN?! Didn’t this happen within the last few years?
zoziw on
Other cities think they are better than us because they have clean running water, but I think that is overrated.
Outside-Today-1814 on
Calgary has a few MASSIVE feeder mains that are critical to the network. Water mains this big are super rare; that’s why they needed to get pipe all the way from Dan Diego to fix the last water main break. Calgarys feeder mains were built using a combination of steel and reinforced concrete pipe. Steel is more durable, but more expensive and requires a coating (inside and out) to prevent corrosion. Reinforced concrete is cheaper and doesn’t require a coating, however there is a layer of wire on the outside to give it structural strength. This wire is exposed and vulnerable to corrosion.Â
When Calgary built these mains, they did soil testing. Steel was used in areas with high concentration in elements that increase corrosion potential. Concrete was used in areas where soil had low concentration of elements that cause corrosion. This was perfectly normal and acceptable. The problem is that the soil chemistry has since changed dramatically; this was discovered in a post incident report of the last water main break. The authors of that report attribute it to road deicing liquids/solids, which are leaching corrosion causing elements into the soil, leading to much higher than anticipated corrosion in the steel wire surrounding the concrete pipes. It’s not clear to me if this is just a gradual accumulation due to decades of deicing since the pipes were built, or if a recent change in deicing practices as caused it (if anyone knows please tell me).
It’s a bit of a scary situation for Calgary, and one that has been discussed for several years. Replacing the concrete sections of pipes will be insanely expensive, and since they’re so critical, large portions of the city would lack water during replacement. At this point they might just have to bite the bullet.Â
13 Comments
again?
I’ve seen this one before.
Infrastructure in Calgary is a mess.
Not again.
I’m getting deja vu
Who would have thought that massive expansion with incredibly hard water and no improvements for 40 years would bring about infrastructure failures?
Pipes and mains have a life expectancy. Maintenance and upgrades are reasonable but municipalities have been putting them off.
Didn’t Calgary plunder their emergency fund to artificially deflate their property tax increase? The province better not step in to help Calgary again. They vote conservative, they should be fiscally responsible.
Albertan tax payers are going to give yet another hand out to Calgarians.
I thought pipes and pipelines were supposed to be our whole thing. We’re really fumbling the bag over here
I’ll be waiting for the exact same amount of blame Gondek got for the last one as Farkas will for this. Not holding my breath
Almost got through 2025 without one. Here’s to better luck in 2026.
AGAIN?! Didn’t this happen within the last few years?
Other cities think they are better than us because they have clean running water, but I think that is overrated.
Calgary has a few MASSIVE feeder mains that are critical to the network. Water mains this big are super rare; that’s why they needed to get pipe all the way from Dan Diego to fix the last water main break. Calgarys feeder mains were built using a combination of steel and reinforced concrete pipe. Steel is more durable, but more expensive and requires a coating (inside and out) to prevent corrosion. Reinforced concrete is cheaper and doesn’t require a coating, however there is a layer of wire on the outside to give it structural strength. This wire is exposed and vulnerable to corrosion.Â
When Calgary built these mains, they did soil testing. Steel was used in areas with high concentration in elements that increase corrosion potential. Concrete was used in areas where soil had low concentration of elements that cause corrosion. This was perfectly normal and acceptable. The problem is that the soil chemistry has since changed dramatically; this was discovered in a post incident report of the last water main break. The authors of that report attribute it to road deicing liquids/solids, which are leaching corrosion causing elements into the soil, leading to much higher than anticipated corrosion in the steel wire surrounding the concrete pipes. It’s not clear to me if this is just a gradual accumulation due to decades of deicing since the pipes were built, or if a recent change in deicing practices as caused it (if anyone knows please tell me).
It’s a bit of a scary situation for Calgary, and one that has been discussed for several years. Replacing the concrete sections of pipes will be insanely expensive, and since they’re so critical, large portions of the city would lack water during replacement. At this point they might just have to bite the bullet.Â