Calgarians along the route of the twinned Bearspaw South feeder main will begin seeing heavy equipment in the area as the City of Calgary moves swiftly on a redundant pipe – a scene all too familiar over the past 18 months.

Early indications are that the City is hoping to have the replacement pipe done by the end of 2026. Calgary’s mayor said the complete fix could cost “hundreds of millions.”

Councillors got details on the expedited Bearspaw feeder main during Question Period at the Jan. 20, 2026, Public Hearing Meeting of Calgary city council.

Work will begin as early as the end of this week on the new line, as a construction contract was awarded, pipe is already being manufactured and heavy equipment is on its way, according to Infrastructure Services GM Michael Thompson.

Further stabilizing repairs on the current Bearspaw South feeder main line are also expected to happen as early as the spring, requiring the line to be taken out of service.

Thompson said, given the risks to the community during the repair process, like a failure at the Glenmore water treatment plant, plus the potential for rapid depletion of the Glenmore Reservoir, that getting on with the redundancy was critical.

“If we are using the Glenmore water treatment plant at three times the typical usage in the winter, given the urgency that we had with running out of water, if that pipe is out service for an additional six weeks, we evaluated the risks that we were facing as a community and made the decision to cancel the existing procurement and to award it directly to a contractor who could start immediately,” he told councillors.  

“We did that on Friday.”

The City of Calgary did announce last week that Ward and Burke Microtunneling was awarded the construction contract and Graham Construction as the construction manager.

The original request for proposals was scheduled to end Jan. 29, but Thompson said that given the urgency a sole-sourced contract was awarded to someone who was a bidder on the original project.

Funding in place for the first phase of Bearspaw replacement

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot said the previous council was aware of the need to replace the Bearspaw South feeder main line and had included it as part of the strategic budget planning. That’s why the previous council approved a nearly threefold increase in infrastructure spending.

“… But that process involved a competitive process, bidding, getting RFPs from multiple companies, so we get the… best possible price for this replacement,” Chabot said.

So, he asked when council would get a chance to weigh in on the finances of this decision to sole-source.

GM Thompson said that had they not moved forward with a potential contract until the Jan. 29 RFP deadline, they would have risked not having the pipe done by the winter of 2026.

“Going forward, we will be back to council requesting additional funds for this project,” Thompson said.

Funding was previously approved for Stage A of the replacement, which went from the Shaganappi Pump Station to the Sarcee Trail interchange, Thompson said. They will need more funding for Stage B, which goes from the Sarcee Trail interchange to the Bow River, plus the reinforcement work that’s required along the line.

“We need to build this pipe as quickly as possible, as safely as possible and with high quality so that we have that quality infrastructure for future generations,” Thompson said.

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said that he would be supporting the needed investments to deal with the problem.

“That said, there will be some cost considerations, particularly potentially around property taxes, around rates that Calgarians pay. But the silver lining is that if we actually address the aging nature of our water pipes, we may see significant cost reductions for Calgarians,” he said.

Farkas said that all options were on the table in terms of funding the Bearspaw South replacement pipe. The initial Stage A estimate was somewhere around $200 million, and covered under the $1.1 billion tranche already approved by council.

“We need to rally to support this to the scale of likely hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mayor Farkas said.

The mayor did note that the cost would likely be over a 30-year or more timeframe. Plus, combined with leak repairs in Calgary’s overall water system, there should be overall water savings.  

“If we can tighten up those pipes, it’s not just paying more for the sake of paying more. It’s paying now more in the immediate moment so that we can save a ton of money down the road,” he said.

“So, there’s no question that this will cost money, but it’s going to cost way more money if we don’t deal with it here.”