Watermain breaks cut by 50 per cent; preventative maintenance cited

Watermain breaks continue to cause headaches for drivers in the city of Cambridge, but new numbers are showing a sizeable drop in reports from just 10 years ago.

That’s according to the Director of Environmental Services with the City of Cambridge, Mike Parsons, who said it’s good news for those who have been getting stuck in recent bouts of traffic from ongoing repairs.

“Generally, we’re seeing some improvements for sure,” Parsons said. “We’ve been performing quite a bit of preventative maintenance on the system over the last decade or so.”

The statement comes after a recent string of watermain breaks needing repairs in the city, with delays seen on Hespeler Road, Pinebush Road, and Fountain Street all within the past few weeks.

Parsons said that even though the breaks have been close in timing and even close in location, particularly when looking at the breaks at Hespeler and Pinebush, there hasn’t been a notable tie between them.

In fact, he said some of the recent work has been an example of those preventative steps that the city has been taking.

“The two repairs were not related,” Parsons said. “The work being done on Hespeler Road was to re-asphalt a previous trench that had been sinking.”

He went into detail on those comparative numbers, showing a stark drop in reported watermain breaks in recent years compared with 10 years ago, thanks to the work the city has been doing.

“Ten years ago, we were repairing about 300 watermain and service repairs in a given year. At this point in time, we’re averaging about 150, so we’ve really cut back on the number of repairs that we’ve had to perform.”

Looking into what has happened so far in 2025, Parsons said the city is right on pace with those new averages, sitting just below half of what’s expected as the year passes its own halfway mark.

Full clip from Mike Parsons, Director of Environmental Services with the City of Cambridge, on the improved watermain break numbers in recent years.

“We’ve had about 60 repairs in total. Generally, on average, we’re looking at about 150 a year, so we’re sitting in the ballpark,” Parsons said. “A little under 50 per cent of where we would normally be on average, and we’re halfway through the year. It’s a pretty good indication.”

He said that while there will never be a full stop to watermain issues in any modern city, it’s a good direction for those numbers to be heading in.