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A day after officials first asked Calgarians to reduce their water use in the wake of Tuesday\u2019s catastrophic water main break, the city says it is not seeing any real reduction in usage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That means the city is \u201cstill very much in the red zone,\u201d Mayor Jeromy Farkas said during a update Thursday, with higher than sustainable demand on the system.<\/p>\n
Typically, the city has about 600 million litres of water stored underground on a daily basis. That dropped to 459 million litres after the break of the Bearspaw south feeder main.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While those numbers rebounded slightly, more water needs to be saved so that supply is not depleted in the event of another incident, said Michael Thompson, the city\u2019s infrastructure services general manager.<\/p>\n
Calgarians have been asked to reduce their water consumption wherever possible, by taking showers for three minutes or less, limiting toilet flushing and running dishwashers and washing machines only when full.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each minute shaved off a shower could potentially save six to eight litres of water, said Chris Huston, the city\u2019s manager of the drinking water distribution system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said if everyone in the city could reduce their water intake by 10-30 litres daily, it would significantly help in reaching the target usage faster.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said the goal is to have the broken section of the pipe repaired by two weeks from when the break occurred. <\/p>\n
City officials are also calling on businesses to reduce their water usage where possible, suggesting restaurants refill patron\u2019s water glasses only by request, or using bottled water.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI know this is not how anyone wanted to begin in January, and we understand the impact that this has had on your daily routine,\u201d said Sue Henry, Calgary Emergency Management Agency chief.<\/p>\n
\u201cReducing water use right now is critical.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767314888_851_default.jpg\")
Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas says demand on the water system is still in the unsustainable “red zone” after Tuesday’s water main break. City officials are asking Calgarians to reduce their water usage where possible. (City of Calgary)<\/p>\n
Parts of Montgomery, West Hillhurst, Parkdale and Point McKay remain under a boil water advisory. <\/p>\n
No ‘guarantee\u2019 pipe won\u2019t break again\u00a0<\/p>\n
City officials said they still do not know what led to this week\u2019s failure, and Huston said they \u201ccan\u2019t guarantee 100 per cent\u201d that another break would not happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After 2024\u2019s catastrophic break, the city began plans to replace the Bearspaw south feeder main with a new steel pipe \u2014 a project already on an accelerated timeline that the city says will now be sped up even more, given the events of this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the interim, the plan was to use an acoustic fibre optic monitoring system to listen for the sound of any wire snaps, indicating the break of\u00a0a reinforcing wire inside the pipe. Officials would be able to identify spots where multiple snaps were heard, and perform emergency repairs .\u00a0<\/p>\n
But no snaps were heard in the two months leading up to Tuesday\u2019s break, according to Thompson.<\/p>\n
And since monitoring began, only 18 snaps were detected across the entire feeder main, compared to 20 snaps heard in July and August in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought the pipe was stable and operating in good condition at that point. We knew the pipe wasn\u2019t great, we knew it needed more work, but we hadn\u2019t heard any wire snaps,\u201d said Thompson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Farkas said ultimately, the Bearspaw south feeder main has reached the end of its reliable lifecycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can keep patching it, we can keep reacting, but it will continue to fail until there is an alternative built,\u201d said Farkas. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-212387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}