Crews work to repair a major water main break and five other weak spots in Calgary, on June 22.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Last week alone, a failing aqueduct in Montreal deprived the city’s biggest hospital of water, Toronto admitted that residents were getting huge water bills because one-third of its meters were faulty, and West Vancouver finally allowed swimming at a beach closed for two weeks because of high E. coli levels that could have come from sewage overflows.
These were part of a steady drumbeat of warnings about the state of Canada’s water infrastructure. While less dramatic than the catastrophic break in Calgary that forced weeks of water restrictions, every month brings new evidence of creaky municipal pipes.
As bad as it looks, a recent Globe and Mail analysis found that greater problems lie waiting. In the country’s biggest cities, nearly one-quarter of the pipes are in poor or very poor condition. And it could be even worse than it seems: condition assessments don’t always involve inspecting a pipe and can rely instead on educated guesswork.
Just stopping the country’s water systems from deteriorating further will cost billions. Actually fixing them up means an even bigger price tag. Still, continuing to gamble – hoping that necessary repairs can be put off for one more year, then another, risking major breakdowns for short-term savings – ultimately will cost more.
Failing or absent water systems are a problem most visibly in small, rural and First Nations communities. These are rightly seen as a national scandal. But the infrastructure is also in bad shape in the economic engines of the country. Nearly one-third of Canadians live in its 10 biggest cities, which were the focus of The Globe’s analysis.
It’s time for a frank debate.
In aid of that conversation, a few points for policy makers to remember. One, you can’t remove politics entirely from water but you can keep it at arm’s length. Two, urban residents alone can’t fund these systems. And, three, cities can’t pass the buck and load these costs onto new development.
In many cities, per-capita water consumption has been falling. This is in part because of more efficient appliances, but it’s also because of higher user fees. People more carefully use what they have to pay for. And those fees were able to rise as much as they have because cities spun off water governance. Toronto, Halifax and Edmonton all have structures that leave decisions about water-usage costs to non-politicians. These arrangements are not perfect – Edmonton’s water agency, Epcor, was less than forthcoming in response to Globe inquiries – but have merit. Realistic water costs reduce excess consumption, which reduces strain on infrastructure, extending its life.
However, even though user fees can cover the cost of operations in some cities, they can’t rise enough to fund full capital replacement as well. Water is too central to life to be priced out of reach. And while cities should certainly look for savings elsewhere in their budgets – surely some nice-to-haves could be sacrificed in favour of something as vital as safe, reliable water – they can’t fund this alone. Higher levels of government, the ones with the deepest pockets, must recognize that keeping infrastructure in good condition is as important as building it. Pro tip: while upkeep historically has not won political plaudits, cascading failures would be politically devastating.
One source of infrastructure funding has traditionally been development charges. These fees, levied on new homes, in theory pay for extra costs associated with that growth: new sewers and sidewalks and so on. But in some cases they’ve become a way to fund renewal of existing infrastructure by diverting the burden off existing homeowners, keeping their taxes low at the expense of new arrivals. That was always an unfair approach. And in a country facing a severe housing shortage, it would be wrong to push the cost of keeping up water systems that serve cities as a whole onto people trying to buy a home.
Any given water pipe can fail unexpectedly and spectacularly. Let the system as a whole decline and we will see more of that.
Water is the most fundamental necessity of life; Canadians over decades built infrastructure worth hundreds of billions to treat it and deliver it to residents. Allowing these systems to decay further, because of the political challenges to generate new funding, is the worst sort of short-term thinking. Because the costs will only go up.
Globe reporters Tu Thanh Ha and Oliver Moore investigated the state of drinking water systems in Canada’s 10 biggest cities. Oliver joined The Decibel to talk about what they found, and why cities have such a hard time keeping such an essential service in a state of good repair.