The city of Calgary has been jolted by two severe reminders of the fragility of its water supply system in less than two years, exposing what an independent review calls deep-seated and systemic management failures.
Back-to-Back Failures of a Critical Lifeline
The rupture of the Bearspaw South feeder main in June 2024 triggered nearly four months of citywide water restrictions. The city narrowly averted a more severe crisis by relying heavily on its Glenmore water treatment plant to meet minimum demands.
The situation repeated alarmingly on December 30, 2025, when the same critical pipeline, which carries up to 60 percent of the water for Calgary and surrounding areas, failed again. This winter failure occurred under the precise conditions experts had warned could push the system beyond its breaking point.
A Failure of Planning and Prevention
Siegfried Kiefer, chair of the independent review panel investigating the 2024 break, states the failures were not surprises but symptoms of long-standing issues. "The failure of the line should not have been a surprise," Kiefer asserts, pointing to systemic problems in managing the delivery of safe, reliable, and affordable drinking water.
Drawing from his experience as former president and CEO of Canadian Utilities, Kiefer contrasts Calgary's water planning with standards for other essential services. He notes that natural gas networks are designed for worst-case scenarios, like ten consecutive days of -40°C weather combined with component failures, with built-in redundancy to ensure no single point of failure leaves customers without heat.
"That’s what essential service planning looks like — assume that critical assets can fail and build in redundancy," Kiefer emphasized. He argues Calgarians would be outraged if their gas utility said it was only prepared for when things "go mostly right," yet this is effectively the position the city's water system was in during both crises.
Known Risks and Deferred Action
The failed pipeline is a pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP) manufactured in the mid-1970s, a type known to be prone to premature failure. The vulnerability of this vintage of pipe was first identified in 2004 after a similar rupture on the McKnight feeder main and was confirmed in subsequent studies.
Despite this known risk, inspection, monitoring, and maintenance were repeatedly deferred. The review panel found that an unsubstantiated belief in the low probability of failure was prioritized over preparing for the major consequences of a critical infrastructure breakdown.
Kiefer concludes with a grave warning: Calgary’s water system has been operating with a much slimmer margin for error than what citizens should expect from an essential utility. The repeated crises serve as a stark warning to Calgary and other municipalities across Canada about the perils of neglecting critical infrastructure and failing to plan for inevitable failures.
