A culvert operation: Flushing out the data on Canada’s storm water and wastewater infrastructure

Canada is a gigantic country that gets a lot of precipitation. And for a population close to 37 million that uses the bathroom daily, perhaps the number 1 (and, well, number 2) question is: what is the state of the systems that handle our storm water and wastewater?

First, the nationwide stats: in 2020, there were 4,126 wastewater treatment plants and lagoon systems; 164,211 kilometres of wastewater pipes and sanitary forcemains; 108,447 kilometres of storm water pipes; and 284,827 kilometres of culverts and open ditches.

To put that into perspective, you would have to zigzag the 5,514-kilometre distance from Cape Spear, Newfoundland, to the Yukon–Alaska boundary almost 86 times to cover the distance of all those pipes!

Improvements to systems, but more still needed

Nationwide, 14.7% of public organizations needed to upgrade their wastewater systems to meet effluent quality standards of the Federal Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations, an improvement from 16.6% in 2018.

The statistics varied by region (note that Quebec and the territories are subject to their own provincial and territorial standards). Overall, Saskatchewan toped all other provinces, as 10.2% of the province’s public system owners needed to make upgrades in 2020, the best improvement since 2016 (34.9%).

Ontario was close behind, with 12.9% of its utility owners needing systems upgrades in 2020, a 13-point improvement since 2016.

Conversely, Newfoundland and Labrador was the only province to see an increase in owners having to upgrade their systems, up nearly 3 percentage points from 2016 to 57.6% in 2020. Notably, the province had over one-third (34.2%) of the 401 total public organizations nationwide whose systems needed upgrades.

Infrastructure condition varies by type, region

At 178,193 kilometres combined, publicly owned sewer and storm water pipes with a diameter of 450 millimetres or less accounted for the largest share (65.4%) of the nationwide total in 2020.

Over one-tenth (12%) of sewer pipes of this diameter were in unknown condition in 2020, while 8.7% were poor and 5.1% were very poor. Storm water pipes in the same category fared slightly better, with 6.4% in poor condition and 3.2% in very poor condition, but with 16% in unknown condition.

Over one-quarter (27.6%) of sewer pipes with a diameter greater than or equal to 1,500 millimetres had an unknown physical condition, compared with 13.9% of those between 450 and 1,500 millimetres.

The condition was reported as either poor or very poor for more than 5% of publicly owned storm water assets, such as drainage pump stations, management ponds, and wetlands. However, over one-tenth (11%) of end-of-pipe facilities (such as oil-grit separators) were reported to be in poor condition.

Overall, 6 in 10 (60.9%) storm water drainage pump stations in Saskatchewan were in good condition, while over half (56.9%) of Alberta’s were in very good condition. Over half (56.2%) of those in Newfoundland and Labrador were in good condition.

The conditions of storm water management facilities, management ponds, and wetlands were generally better, as nearly 2 in 3 were either in very good (31.2%) or good (30.6%) condition, and over 1 in 10 (11.8%) were reported in fair condition.

Conditions were also varied for wastewater assets. Close to 4 in 10 (38.8%) treatment plants nationwide were in good condition, while just over 1 in 10 (10.2%) lift stations were in poor condition. Over half (50.9%) of those in Prince Edward Island had an unknown condition.

Nationwide, 1 in 10 pump stations (10.0%) and wastewater storage tanks (10.8%) had an unknown physical condition. Almost all (94.3%) of New Brunswick’s tanks, a third of Alberta’s (33.3%), and one- quarter (25.5%) of British Columbia’s were in an unknown condition.

Conversely, 30.2% of wastewater storage tanks in Prince Edward Island were reported in very poor condition, while nearly 62% of those in Nova Scotia were in very good condition.

An increasing drain on budgets

In 2020, 15.4% of total capital spending on infrastructure by municipal, local, and regional governments was on sewage infrastructure.

Capital expenditures on sewer infrastructure topped $4.2 billion in 2020, up by nearly half (49.7%) from 2016, a higher rate than that of waterworks expenditures.

Nationwide in 2021, sewage infrastructure had both the highest average age (17.5 years) and lowest average remaining useful life (51.5%) of all fixed assets such as commercial and institutional buildings, electric power infrastructure, and highway infrastructure.

This was also true for the average age of sewage infrastructure from 2016 to 2020 among all asset categories, and from 2016 to 2019, it ranked second lowest to marine engineering infrastructure in terms of remaining useful life (in 2020 it was the lowest).

This is an indication of the unique challenges of the repair and construction involved not only for the sheer amount of infrastructure, but also that a large portion of it is underground.