when calgary’s giant super-soaker water pipe was installed in 1975, nobody dreamed that the concrete would someday decay, wires would snap, and water would burst out.
“i recall having discussions as late as 2000 saying that the concrete is so passive that soil just can’t corrode it,” says roy brander, who retired from the city in 2016 after many years as the senior pipeline engineer.
the belief that concrete pipe was completely impervious “was like some kind of magic spell . . . it just would not corrode, period.”
the city learned this was false in 2004, when a major line burst on mcknight boulevard. the pipe was so decayed that it “looked like talcum powder,” former official james buker told me in june.
buker had worked on the 1975 project as a young engineer. the faith in concrete pipe was universal.
“we thought we were bulletproof until mcknight happened, and all of a sudden we realized concrete can get eaten away by aggressive soils,” he said to me thursday.
the city immediately ramped up inspection. calgary became a national leader in the field. but the escalating damage to the huge bearspaw feeder was somehow missed —
until it exploded on june 5
.
the line never had full testing with “
pipe diver
” technology that was becoming available. buker, who retired in 2016 as the city’s head of water transmission and distribution, says “they just never got around to that one because it was so big and so critical.