City to find ways to notify residents faster about water main breaks

Ottawa city water pipe broken in Elmvale Acres neighbourhood of Ottawa in a file photo from this winter. Photo by TONY CALDWELL /POSTMEDIA

Article content

City council has voted to explore options for letting residents know when there’s been an unexpected water main break.

Article content

Orléans West—Innes Coun. Laura Dudas said her motion stemmed from several water main breaks she has had in her ward over the past few years.

Article content

Article content

“Over the course of those breaks, the communications was ad hoc. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was poor to non-existent,” said Dudas.

Article content

Article content

“My office had to seek information on several occasions that was very basic details about what was happening. What we were finding is some of the residents were going out to talk to workers as they were trying to repair the water main break, just to get the basic details about what was going on.”

Article content

Article content

In the short term, city staff are to improve communications, develop a tool kit for city councillors to provide information sharing with residents and review existing internal notification processes to identify areas for improvement.

Article content

City staff are to report back by the end of the first quarter of 2027 (after this fall’s municipal election) on medium to long-term plans, including possible platforms or notification systems to help the public get that information.

Article content

Unplanned water main breaks and leaks have caused notable inconvenience to residents in cities across Canada. In June 2024, a water main break in Calgary prompted a state of emergency and water restrictions.

Article content

In the last week of December and the first week of January, the City of Ottawa received 32 requests for service reporting water main leaks and breaks. Later in January, a serious water main break snarled traffic on eastbound Baseline Road at Fisher Avenue. In a report released in June 2025, city staff predicted a $10.8-billion gap between projected infrastructure needs and the funding set aside for those projects over the next decade, driven by aging assets, the effects of climate change, rising construction costs and a limited number of revenue sources.

Article content

Article content

River ward Coun. Brockington said there’s is aging infrastructure is his ward and he’s had at least two dozen unscheduled or unplanned water main breaks a year, mostly in the winter.

Article content

Article content

Residents can plan around breaks where there’s advance notice. It’s the unscheduled breaks that cause communication problems, said Brockington. Even he has had to call 3-1-1, the city’s customer service line, to report an apparent breach.

Article content

“The agent does not have any information, which means if members of the public call in, they have no source other than if I see an email notification. I can put that out on social media. But how do members of the public get accurate information when an unscheduled water main break occurs?”

Article content

Unplanned water main breaks are challenging in terms of communication because there are no sensors in the distribution network that would give the city an indication that it’s happening, Tammy Rose, the city’s general manager of infrastructure and water services, told councillors.

Article content

“We are the ones who are informed when someone makes the call to 3-1-1 to signal that there’s water on the road, there’s something happening,” she said. “So that begins our dispatch to go to the site visit, confirm that it’s a water main break, and then confirm what is the isolation and the impacted residents.”