The City of Calgary has ordered a third-party investigation into a crippling water feeder main break that’s forced lengthy water restrictions and a massive repair.

News of the investigation came during the mayor’s Tuesday morning (June 18) update where she provided new information on the review and the ongoing repair work being done on the Bearspaw south feeder main.

Questions have been raised by citizens over how a large feeder main that’s only 49 years into a 100-year lifespan could fail. City officials have said that the pre-stressed wires wrapping the concrete infrastructure failed at multiple points, likely leading to the break.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said she’s had conversations with City of Calgary Chief Administrative Officer David Duckworth to start the review process.

“I know you want to understand what happened to this pipe in the first place, and I do, too. It’s for that reason that I called for a third party to do a complete incident review of this situation,” the mayor said.

“I know that this review will go a long way to providing both answers and transparency.”

CAO Duckworth said the framework of the review has already been established. It will include, but not be limited to understanding how the pipe failed, what the City’s current practices for inspection and asset sustainability are, and recommendations for actions to improve water supply resilience.

The review will be conducted by a panel of experts, including academics, water industry experts and utilities professionals, engineers and government officials.

“The expert panel will ultimately provide recommendations for findings of this work, then action… shared with Calgarians,” he said.  

“I personally will commit to providing more information as it becomes available.”

Councillors, public want answers

Ward 11 Coun. Kourtney Penner said she knows citizens want answers – not only how the pipe ruptured, but also how it will be prevented from happening again. She said, however, that it was important to understand the priorities and the sequence of different stages they need to move through to get to these answers.

“While we might want all the answers today, exercising some patience and some judgment on when we get those answers is really critical,” she said.

“We need to deal with the crisis at hand.”

Penner said she understand the need for transparency in this situation, particularly around the review. It’s council’s responsibility to ask difficult questions of city administration, she said.

“I think the accountability for myself and my council colleagues is that we would like to release this information and to give that assurance to Calgarians that we do have infrastructure well in hand,” she said.

“Sometimes things do happen and things do break, but we would be looking to prevent it in the future.”

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot said that to date he hasn’t heard a cost estimate for the project. In Tuesday’s council briefing, Calgary Emergency Management Agency Chief Coby Duerr said that they’re tracking the costs “daily “very, very carefully” throughout the event. Deputy Chief Duerr said that financial coding was set up immediately and cost tracking will be a part of the incident review.

Coun. Chabot said that the rubber will hit the road at some juncture. With a State of Local Emergency the city can incur whatever costs necessary to resolve a situation, Chabot said. Not to mention the costs of further line inspection or replacement, he said.

“At the end of the day, at some point in time, we’re going to have to pay for this,” Chabot said.

“Residents will be impacted by this through utility rates.”

San Diego pipes are now in Alberta

Duckworth also said that three of five sections of pipe required to fix the hot spots are in Calgary being prepped for installation.

The remaining two parts are in transit from the San Diego County Water Authority and should be in Calgary Tuesday night (June 18), according to Michael Thompson, the City of Calgary’s general manager for Infrastructure Services. From there, they will be sandblasted and coated with epoxy before being transported to the sites for installation.

“Many specialized materials are required for this replacement work, we are working with various partners to secure these critical parts promptly,” he said.

Pavement removal and excavation began Monday at two new construction sites where hotspots are located. Thompson reiterated that the hotspots are not leaks. They are sections of pipe that require immediate repair.

The city is still operating on a three-to-five-week timeline for repairs to the five hotspots on the Bearspaw south feeder main. Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp questioned the conservative nature of the repair schedule. She said she knows crews are working as hard as they can to get things done swiftly.

“It’s an interesting timeline. I’ll be honest, I expected something between two to maybe three weeks,” she said.

“This is how it works: Youu say it’s two weeks and you’re two weeks and a day, you’re a liar. You’re under two weeks, you’re a hero.”

Sharp asked if the timeline included the repair of roads torn up by the water main work.

GM Thompson said that completion of the roadwork wasn’t specifically in their schedule right now.

“The focus we have is to restore water service for our communities. The repair work will follow,” he said.

“We can trust that people will work as quickly as we can to restore the roadwork as soon as possible, it’s just not on the critical path to restoring water service.”

Thompson said that there would be an updated timeline provided later this week. There are five complex work sites that will be operating concurrently on repairs.

“I can also assure you that the repair that we’re doing right now, repairing with the five replacements of these sections, isn’t the only plan that we’re putting in place,” he said.

“We’ve got a number of contingency plans that will be in place, whether it’s interior pipeliners, exterior pipeliners and overland recovery in case we need those. We don’t want to use those, but we’re planning for every contingency right now so that we can get service restored as quickly as possible.”