Good morning. The country’s water works are in alarming shape – more on that below, along with the long drive to see a family doctor and Indigenous artist Alex Janvier’s remarkable life. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office are questioning whether Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has what it takes to sell the Liberals’ economic agenda
- A Manitoba serial killer’s legal defence could make history if the judge rules he is not criminally responsible
- Canada has pledged to buy submarines and send more than $500-million in military aid to Ukraine after NATO allies urged it to meet the alliance’s spending targets
Crews working on Calgary's busted water main last month.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Infrastructure
Rust never sleeps
After the main artery of Calgary’s water supply sprung a massive leak last month, one of the major problems – aside from the four weeks of water restrictions and the as-yet-untold cost of repairs – was that no one knew precisely what went wrong. The culprit seemed to be that too many prestressed steel wires had snapped apart, wrecking the Bearspaw South Feedermain’s stability, but the city had rated the pipe in good condition before it broke. Inspection robots sent down after the main busted, however, revealed a grimmer reality: Five more spots along the line were at risk of catastrophic failure.
It’s hardly a headache for Calgary alone. A new analysis in The Globe today shows that nearly one-fifth of the country’s drinking water pipes were put in before 1970 and are reaching the end of their useful lives. The aging is even worse in our 10 biggest cities. Oliver Moore, The Globe’s urban affairs reporter, and Tu Thanh Ha, a reporter on the investigative team, found that 23.9 per cent of the pipes in Canada’s largest cities date back to the 1960s – or earlier. They break thousands of times a year. And municipalities aren’t spending the money that’s needed to repair and replace these creaky systems.
“It’s almost like gambling,” Robert Haller, the executive director of the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association, told my colleagues. “Each year you roll the dice and hope you’ll get another year out of your infrastructure.”
Muddying the waters
Getting an accurate sense of Canada’s sprawling water systems is challenging. Cities self-report to a federal infrastructure survey, so information can be inconsistent, incomplete or entirely absent. And while it’s no sweat to figure out when a pipe was installed, gauging its current condition is a much harder job.
Engineers could extract and evaluate a core sample of the water main, but that requires parts of the pipe to be dug up, which is costly and intrusive. They could try something called pigging – inserting a device loaded with sensors into the pipe – but those pigs don’t help much with sudden failure. Acoustic sensors installed in Calgary’s 49-year-old Bearspaw South Feedermain this spring didn’t pick up on any troubling signs. Engineers could also use a pipe’s age, material and operating pressures for modelling, but that’s just educated guesswork. The modelling done on Calgary’s water main gave no indication that it was stressed.
So what’s left when it comes to testing a pipe’s long-term viability? Tory Vassos, a senior environmental engineer in Vancouver, told my colleagues: “You put it in place and cross your fingers.”
Main squeeze
There’s a whole lot of pipe to worry about in this country – laid end to end, the networks in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary alone would stretch all the way across Canada and back again. That brings along enormous inspection, maintenance and replacement costs. Toronto, for example, is meant to spend $1.74-billion annually on upkeep for its water-supply system. The city has shelled out just half that amount in total over the past 10 years.
But as The Globe’s Moore and Ha write, “the sheer scale of the money needed is beyond the reach of municipalities.” And it can be hard to find political backers at any level to champion the cause. A new transit line is splashy to voters. Pipes aren’t sexy, and they’re also pretty much invisible – until a big leak comes along to remind us how vital this service is for everyone.
The Shot
‘I am in love when I am painting.’
Alex Janvier in his studio on Cold Lake First Nation, Alberta in 2018.Amber Bracken/The Globe and Mail
Renowned Indigenous artist Alex Janvier, whose abstract paintings are a kaleidoscope of colour, has died at the age of 89. Read more about his extraordinary life and work here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: In Ontario, nearly 700,000 people live more than 50 kilometres away from their family doctor – and 130,000 of them travel at least 200 km just to access primary care.
Abroad: Bad news for Joe Biden: Nancy Pelosi’s support is tepid at best, while George Clooney is calling for him to step aside in a New York Times op-ed.
Books: More than 20 authors have pulled their books from consideration for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize to protest the sponsors’ ties to Israel’s military efforts.
Cooks: Here are four room-temperature recipes (and one batch cocktail) to make when it’s far too hot to linger over the stove.