Bowness businesses still struggling after water main break, aging infrastructure a concern

Bowness business owner Jill Taylor is still working to get back to normal following the catastrophic water main break nearby that impacted the city water supply.

"Now we're just trying to play catch up," she said. "It did hit us hard, but there's not a whole lot we can do about it."

The June 5 rupture resulted in continuing water use restrictions across Calgary, but the Bowness area was hardest hit. Water pressure was an immediate problem and access to the community was an issue for weeks while repairs took place.

Then on Friday, there was another water main break nearby, but more minor.

Taylor, who owns AtomicDog Boutique, Beastro & Grooming, still has concerns about aging infrastructure in the area and how it will affect her business moving forward.  

"The city's growing so fast, so far, that old infrastructure has sort of been left on the wayside," she said. "We need to decide what we're going to spend our money on, and infrastructure in the future is more where we should go."

The rupture in the Bearspaw south feeder main led to citywide outdoor water restrictions and voluntary limits on water consumption. While restrictions have been reduced and the pipe is operational again, this isn't the first pipe break to affect businesses in the Bowness area, and many are bracing for similar events in the future. 

Another, less severe, water main break occurred in February, forcing several businesses in the area to temporarily close. 

Water line breaks in Bowness were not common until recently, said Jacqui Esler, executive director of the Mainstreet Bowness Business Improvement Area (BIA) — but they're having an effect now. 

"We are at the mercy of this old infrastructure," Esler said. "We're just dealing with pipes that break all the time and we were just the victim of two in three to four months."

Ongoing water woes

Nicholas Scurfield said previous water breaks were more devastating for his business, Bowness Arts, a cafe that sells board games, vinyl records, books and art. A pipe break a couple of years ago occurred in front of the building on Bowness Road N.W. and deterred customers from shopping, he said.

The February break was equally as bad, he said, as water in the area was shut off for a week.  

"We run game tournaments here, so we'll get groups of 40 to 50 people filling this room," he said, referring to the shop's game room. "People do spend extended periods of time here, so if the water shuts off completely that's pretty bad."

Scurfield added they were fortunate the most recent rupture barely affected Bowness Arts. They only had to close the kitchen, which makes up a small portion of sales. 

"Our sales are growing week over week," he said. "So even if this water main break was bad for business — which it probably was — I haven't really noticed an effect 'cause the business is growing so quickly outside of that."

Other shops, however, felt the effects of the June rupture more acutely, with some reporting 50 to 70 per cent fewer sales, according to Esler.

"Grooming is about 50 per cent of our income, so we were totally shut down for a week with zero grooming," Taylor said, adding their groomers work on commission and lost "100 per cent of their weekly income." 

Taylor said they are about three weeks behind in making back the lost revenue, but things would have been much worse if they did not have their retail department.

"The local community helped us out with shopping here for the retail to sort of keep our numbers up. So we weren't hit as bad as we could have been."

Esler said not all businesses were as lucky. Compared to last year, she said, most have failed to bring in equal amounts of revenue — losing out on a key profit period in June.

"June was a tough month and June is a month where businesses want to make their money," Esler said. "They don't have a cushion of any kind to continue into the summer."

Infrastructure still a concern

Bowness is one of the oldest communities in Calgary, merging with the city in 1964. 

Much of the water pipe infrastructure in Canada was built in the 1960s and '70s. Statistics Canada reports just over 38 per cent, or around one-third, of the country's potable water assets were built in this period and are now approaching the end of their lifespans.

The situation is no different in Bowness, with most pipes along Bowness Road being built around or before 1970, according to the city's Public Water Services Line map.

Scurfield said his experiences with water line breaks in Bowness showed him just how vulnerable the community's infrastructure is. 

"I know that this part of the city is very old, so I would hope that going forward there's a plan to continuously inspect and fix these things before they cause sinkholes like the last one did."

Taylor agrees, but also said that in the event of another break there is not much her business can do besides continue to plug along.

"We're just going to have to go with the flow."