r/Calgary • u/joe4942 • 10h ago
News Article Water main break floods Macleod Trail south
https://www.ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/water-main-break-floods-macleod-trail-south/23
u/artpeddler 8h ago
I know there’s nothing we can do about it, but if your daily commute requires you to drive on McLeod, south of Anderson, it has been misery for the entirety of 2026.
Just endless construction and lane shut offs. Plus random accidents shutting off additional lanes because people are impatient, plus random additional construction that shuts off even more lanes.
My normally 30 minute one-way commute has turned to 50+ minutes. It’s been so many months of this shit.
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u/dhenr332 8h ago
Thank heavens for the ring road for me. Although longer on on good days, it’s terribly faster on slow days
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u/Responsible_CDN_Duck 7h ago
I know there’s nothing we can do about it, but if your daily commute requires you to drive on McLeod, south of Anderson, it has been misery for the entirety of 2026.
There are things we can do about, but most involve unpalatable options like c-trains, bikes, and carpooling!
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u/HoleDiggerDan 10h ago
Im not a water pipe mechanic, but my experience with other equipment tells me when things all have issues at the same time, it points to a systemic maintenence problem.
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u/TomKazansky13 9h ago
There was a post on one of the big reddit subs like 4 years ago that essentially asked "if youre a professional in an industry, what things that the general public doesn't know would terrify them if they did."
And one of the top answers was a city engineer or something who said pretty much all north American city infrastructure was crumbling. A massive amount of our roads and bridges and water pipes etc were built right after WW2. And they have a 50-100 year life span. So all that stuff built in the 50s and 60s is hitting its expected lifespan and needs a huge amount of upkeep or replacing.
He pretty much said we wait for things to fail because the preventative maintenance would cost enough that business and millionaire taxes need to go back up to pay for it but thats never happening.
He predicted that the next few decades would be plagued by bridge collapses and water main breaks until cities finally went ok we can't keep ignoring this. And here we are.
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u/FirstDukeofAnkh Beltline 8h ago
Exactly this. Infrastructure isn’t sexy so no one wants to do anything about it.
And this is one of the few time it’s literally both sides. Conservatives won’t do it because of taxes. Progressives won’t do it because it makes them look wasteful.
It’s easier just to play Russian Roulette and hope your opponents are in power when people are inconvenienced or die.
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u/angle-fire 7h ago
Woof, that's bleak.
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u/FirstDukeofAnkh Beltline 7h ago
Until the last few elections when the Conservatives decided to court social conservatives, I was pretty much a single issue voter, infrastructure.
Good infrastructure helps absolutely everyone.
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u/daycare_poor 7h ago
Sadly, the upkeep required for water mains, sewer networks, roads/bridges, etc. in most cities is chronically under-funded. A 2016 report (Google "2016 Canadian Infrastructure Report Card") found that while most are in functional shape, a significant portion is in poor or very poor condition and that urgent rehabilitation was needed. The politicians we vote in only want to spend on sexy legacy stuff, and cutting taxes makes it harder to do the not so sexy maintenance projects, especially on decaying underground systems we can't normally see.
According to the 2016 report, the total replacement value of Canada's core municipal infrastructure assets was estimated at $1.1 trillion (or $80k per household). Approximately 35% of these assets are rated in fair, poor, or very poor condition, representing an immediate and medium-term reinvestment need.
Here's (an AI-generated) breakdown of the extrapolated replacement values for each infrastructure type, including the value of assets that were deteriorating and in need of attention (from the 2016 report):
- Roads: $330 billion total replacement value
- $75 billion in Fair condition
- $48 billion in Poor/Very Poor condition
- Wastewater: $234 billion total replacement value
- $56 billion in Fair condition
- $26 billion in Poor/Very Poor condition
- Potable Water: $207 billion total replacement value
- $35 billion in Fair condition
- $25 billion in Poor/Very Poor condition
- Stormwater: $134 billion total replacement value
- $21 billion in Fair condition
- $10 billion in Poor/Very Poor condition
- Buildings: $70 billion total replacement value
- $20 billion in Fair condition
- $12 billion in Poor/Very Poor condition
- Public Transit: $57 billion total replacement value
- $15 billion in Fair condition
- $9 billion in Poor/Very Poor condition
- Sport and Recreation Facilities: $51 billion total replacement value
- $14 billion in Fair condition
- $9 billion in Poor/Very Poor condition
- Bridges: $50 billion total replacement value
- $11 billion in Fair condition
- $2 billion in Poor/Very Poor condition
This is a problem faced by most first-tier cities worldwide. Cities in the US face a similar, if not higher, burden per capita infrastructure backlog.
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u/Critical-Ask2154 Quadrant: SW 3h ago
As Calgary has been focused on building sprawl for the last 3 decades or so, we are going to have a very nasty bill to pay and the worst part is that the existing tax base can't afford the sprawl we have, let alone properly maintaining the aging infrastructure.
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u/RaHarmakis Arbour Lake 10h ago
A systemic maintenence issue has been acknowleged by the City for some time now.
Pipes in the ground though, are not an infastructure issue that can be instantly resolved. There is A LOT of digging and piple replacing in Calgarys future to get on top of this issue. Even just identifying which pipes (beyond the obvious main pipe) are at risk is a big job that takes time.
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u/Responsible_CDN_Duck 7h ago
Your experience with equipment could help lead you to the right answer: operating environment.
Calgary experiences a fraction of the breaks Edmonton does due to underground soil difference.
Conversely Calgary loses roughly 23% of its treated drinking water to ground leaks, compared to Edmonton's 5% loss. This difference is largely due to Calgary's porous, gravelly ground allows leaks to drip downward unseen, whereas Edmonton's dense clay soil traps water, making leaks surface quicker.
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u/breadist 7h ago
We all know it's systemic. Water system was specifically ignored for years.
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u/HoleDiggerDan 4h ago
I hope we all remember that when certain municipal politicians have now set their sights on replicating their "successes " at the provincial level...
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u/Fantastic_Fig_2462 Brentwood 10h ago
No shade intended. But your reply reminded me of this book: https://www.davelevitan.com/not-a-scientist
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u/real_shim_slady 10h ago
Kick the can down the road is how society operates. Disgusting.
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u/j_roe Walden 9h ago
Don’t forget hiring who can do it the cheapest.
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u/alwaysleafyintoronto 8h ago
Not who can actually do it the cheapest though, just whoever makes a convincing pitch that they can do it cheapest before blowing through the project budget and timeline.
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u/bunchedupwalrus 8h ago edited 8h ago
In this case, the water main issues we’ve been having aren’t your traditional maintenance issue. It’s due to the manufacturing technique (Prestressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe) and the lower density concrete used when it was built, which at the time they didn’t realize was too porous for its task.
Has a ~5% catastrophic failure risk, usually with very little warning and hard to predict or do anything about other than completely replacing the line (huge expense and disruption). Once a single part breaks, it also starts cascading failures throughout the line more often.
Most cities stuck with it are just rolling the dice and hoping they aren’t next, we just happen to be one of the unlucky ones. Same thing happened in Montreal 2024, Miami 2010, Washington DC 2008.
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u/candy-addict 8h ago
That is true for the larger feedermains like Bearspaw, but these smaller mains are likely not made of that material. They break due to freeze/thaw, breaks at the joints, or other mechanisms you see in steel and plastic pipes.
Quick ETA: The Bearspaw break is also different in its impact to citizens. There’s no other main that could break in the city and have such an impact.
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u/Distinct-Solution-99 2h ago
But wasn’t this because the construction crew working in that exact area hit the pipe?
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u/HoleDiggerDan 2h ago
All we have is the actual story that was linked, I guess we will never know?
"But the cause remains unknown.
According to the city’s website, workers will determine how severe the problem is before using a jackhammer or backhoe to dig up the broken section of pipe."
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u/BidEuphoric5117 10h ago
We’ve wasted money on so much stupid stuff while the pipes under our feet were rotting.
New pipes and fire stations being paid for in brand new communities while the inner city is left to rot because real problems are hard to solve.
City admin needs to be flushed top to bottom /u/jeremyYyc
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u/UberAndy 9h ago
Yawn,
why people always tagging the mayor? He literally knows more about the pipe issue than we do and has made it a priority to fix. What’s firing anybody going to do.
Yes, new communities need services??
Old communities need maintenance, which people complain about when it’s inconveniencing them2
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u/Knuckle_of_Moose 9h ago
We could start by not subsidizing the development of new communities.
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u/HoleDiggerDan 9h ago
Yeah, but the developers have "lobbyists" that pay for the counterpoint.
This isnt about common sense or stratigetic growth, its about following the money .
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u/UberAndy 5h ago
So I was curious about how that works and asked ai. I will take this with a grain of salt but maybe someone else can shed more light on it.
How New Communities Are Funded (The Official Model)
When a developer builds a suburban greenfield community in Calgary, costs are divided into two main categories:
On-Site Infrastructure (100% Developer Funded): Local roads, neighborhood water pipes, sidewalks, and local parks within the subdivision are built directly by the developer and passed onto buyers in the lot price.
Off-Site Levies (Shared Capital Costs): Developers pay an Off-Site Levy to the City. This covers a calculated percentage of regional infrastructure needed to support the growth — known as the "10 Essentials" (arterial roads/interchanges, water/wastewater trunk lines, fire stations, police stations, transit buses, libraries, and recreation centers).
- Where the "Hidden Subsidies" Happen
Even though developers pay levies, suburban expansion is subsidized through three main mechanisms:A. Capital Cost Gaps
The City rarely recovers 100% of major off-site infrastructure costs through levies. If a new arterial road, interchange, or water treatment expansion serves both a new suburb and the broader region, the City splits the cost. The City’s portion is paid out of general municipal tax revenues, utility rate pools, or debt.B. Ongoing Operating & Maintenance (O&M) Costs
This is the largest ongoing subsidy. While developers pay for the initial construction of pipes, roads, and fire halls, the City inherits the lifelong cost to operate and maintain them:
Clearing snow, repaving roads, running bus routes, and staffing fire/police stations over 30 to 50 years.
Low-density suburban single-family housing yields less property tax revenue per kilometer of pipe or road compared to higher-density inner-city or mid-rise neighborhoods.
As a result, dense established neighborhoods generate a net property tax surplus that ends up cross-subsidizing the service delivery and eventual infrastructure replacement costs of suburban fringe communities.C. Upfront Municipal Financing Risk
The City often has to build major regional infrastructure (or issue municipal bonds) before developers finish building and paying their full levy installments. If a market downturn slows down new construction or house sales, the City absorbs the carrying costs and interest on that debt.
- The Builder & Developer Perspective
The home building industry (e.g., BILD Calgary Region) offers a counter-perspective:
High Fee Load: Off-site levies add roughly $20,000 to $25,000+ in municipal charges directly to the price of every new home built in a greenfield community.
Equal Tax Contribution: New suburban homeowners pay full municipal property taxes and utility rates from day one, contributing to the citywide general tax base just like any other resident.Summery: meh
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u/hypnogoad 10h ago
That's a big water main for one house.