Bearspaw South Feeder Main

The City has recently closed a request for proposal for the detailed design for the work related to the Bearspaw South Feeder Main Reliability Project. The City will share additional information with public as it becomes available.

Yes, it is expected that the feeder main will continue to remain in service, except for short durations when the new pipe needs to be tied into the existing feeder main.

Feeder main projects will increase Calgary’s water capacity, to serve growth, provide redundancy and reduce reliance on existing feeder mains.

Two feeder main projects, North Calgary and South Calgary Water Servicing projects will reduce the reliance on the Bearspaw South Feeder Main to supply water during average day demand conditions, but the Bearspaw South Feeder Main will continue to be relied upon in the future to provide maximum daily demand. It is also a key piece of infrastructure that will enable the Glenmore Water Treatment Plant to be taken out of service for planned maintenance and upgrades.

Water treatment plant projects, will increase Calgary’s water treatment and raw water capacity, ensuring sufficient drinking water supply to serve growth. Additionally, the Glenmore Water Treatment Plant Expansion investment will eliminate single points of failure improving the reliability of the treatment plant. 

• The Glenmore Water Treatment Plant Expansion includes a new treated water storage reservoir (called a “clearwell’), high lift pump station and electrical building. These projects will be complete by 2031. 
• The Water Treatment Expansion program includes a new water treatment plant, and a new and/or upgraded raw water intake. The new infrastructure will be located along the Bow River and will be complete in 2035. 

While our third-party experts have told us that a failure of the feeder main is extremely unlikely, the City continues to monitor the Bearspaw South Feeder Main and has an emergency and spare parts plan in place to anticipate and proactively respond to a failure.

The city will be returning to Council in Q3 2025 with additional details regarding the necessary work, including the project phasing, construction technique, alignment and cost estimate.

The City is using a combination of permanent and temporary monitoring along the length of the feeder main, with plans to replace the temporary locations with permanent monitoring equipment in Q2 2025. This monitoring, along with the completed repairs, third party experts’ statistical structural analysis and an emergency and spare parts plan is in place to manage the risk related to future breaks, and in fact allow us to proactively plan for a repair, if necessary.

To improve the reliability of the Prestressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe portion of the Bearspaw South Feeder Main, several rehabilitation and replacement options have been identified and are currently being explored. The options include open cut pipe replacement, external reinforcement, internal lining, and microtunnelling of a new line.

The microtunnelling option has been selected as the most promising option at this time, as the construction technique minimizes traffic impact and water service disruption to Calgarians as well as minimizing the impact to adjacent homeowners and businesses.​

A tunnel construction technique used to construct pipe underground. It includes a micro tunnel boring machine that creates the tunnel and then pipes are inserted behind the machine. This construction technique has been used by the water utility for other large diameter pipes, including the Inglewood Sanitary Trunk crossing of the Bow River and Nose Creek Sanitary trunk adjacent to Deerfoot Trail.​

The North Calgary Water Servicing Project will provide partial system redundancy to the Bearspaw South feeder main. It will also provide redundancy to six other feeder mains. This project will be complete by 2028. 

The South Calgary Water Servicing is in early development and will provide the remaining system redundancy to the Bearspaw South feeder main and two other feeder mains. This project is a new feeder main to move water to south Calgary from the Bearspaw Water Treatment Plant that is planned to be complete by 2031. 

Crosstie Feeder main. This project will improve the redundancy of the feeder main network in NE Calgary and improve system pressures in Saddle Ridge, Taradale, Martindale and Falconridge. This feeder main extends along Country Hills Blvd from Coventry Hills Blvd to 60th Street NE and will be constructed by 2029. 

There are no operating or capital costs associated with the recommendation in report IP 2025-0150. Consistent with current processes within these lines of service, construction budget may be requested separately from when design budget is needed. As projects move through stages of development, and when better cost estimates are available, a budget request for construction may come forward, which will also highlight any impact on rates.