It appears the hundreds of millions of dollars invested every year in fixing the city's aging water infrastructure are starting to bear fruit.
La Presse is reporting we've seen fewer water main breaks in 2018 than we have in 2017. Or at any time in the last five years, in fact.
A document obtained by the online news outlet through an access to information request shows the city experienced 1,845 water main breaks in 2018 — an average of roughly five per day.
In 2015, that figure was at 2,427, or 6.6 per day.
In 2002, barely $20 million was spent on maintaining a water infrastructure which, in many cases, has been in place for more than a century. In 2018, that figure shot up to $440 million, and it's expected to climb to $564 million by 2021.
The report also suggests the city loses roughly a third of its water because of leaky pipes.