The City of Calgary has reached a major milestone in the work to repair the beleaguered Bearspaw South Feeder Main as crews were scheduled to begin the process of slowly refilling the pipe with water on Friday — a task that will take several days to complete.

The water will then need to be tested to confirm it is safe for consumption, then the feeder main will be reconnected to the rest of Calgary’s water system.

The excavations along the nine sections of pipe where the repairs are being done have now been backfilled and the roads that had to be torn up to allow the work to proceed will soon be repaved.

However, the city does not yet have a date for when the water restrictions will be lifted.

“We’re getting close, but we’re not out of the woods yet,” said the city’s general manager of infrastructure services, Michael Thompson. “Over the next few days, we will be moving ahead in a measured, deliberate way, with a focus on stability and safety as we work to start flowing water through the pipe.”

Mayor Jeromy Farkas told Global News in an interview on Friday: “We’re just a couple more days until we can end the water restrictions, but this allows us to reinforce those sections that we knew were on the imminent, imminently going to fail.”

The latest information on water use from the city shows that on Thursday, Calgarians used 483 million litres of water — that’s below the 500 million litres of daily water use that the city claims is sustainable while the feeder main is shut down and the Glenmore Reservoir is being used to supply most of the city’s water.

On Wednesday, Calgarians used 501 million litres.

“We know next week is spring break for a lot of households,” Thompson said.  “We ask everyone to continue with your water saving, especially as your household routines might change next week.”

Thompson said it will also take about five million litres of water to refill the recently repaired sections of the pipe, so overall water use is expected to increase over the weekend.

Even with the repairs that are being done, Farkas continues to warn that the pipe is terminally ill and could still break at any time, which would result in another shutdown and more water restrictions.

While the city said mitigation work has been done to protect homes and businesses, the city has also issued a warning about the possibility of pooling water in the communities of Bowness and Montgomery should there be another failure.

“There are a couple areas through those communities where if the pipe were to fail, it would cause flooding. Think like the videos that folks saw on December 30th when Trans-Canada Highway became that surging river. So we don’t want to be in that situation. So we’ve done some preventative work in the area. You’ll see adjustments to the pathway, the berms, but we want to do this as safely as possible,” Farkas said.

The city has also produced maps of the area showing where water could pool if there is another failure.

The city will also be hosting an online information session on Monday at noon to provide an update on the feeder main repairs for people who live in the area.

Farkas claims the city is also on track to complete the job of replacing the old concrete feeder main with a new steel pipe by sometime in December.

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