Bell: Not again — Calgary water pipe screwup, when will it ever end?

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Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it just did.

Yes, more dark clouds in Blue Sky City.

Even in these dog days of summer where newshounds often scrounge for any kind of story, Calgary city hall is there to churn out more bad news.

Never in my 34 years of following the political fight game has it been this bad at Calgary city hall and that’s saying something because there have been some real ugly years.

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Real ugly but not this ugly.

They’ve elevated ugly to a whole new level. This is in-your-face ugly. You can’t ignore it.

And so on Wednesday we brace ourselves for the latest bitter pill we’re being told to swallow.

Cut water use indoors, clamp down on outdoor water use starting in the last week of August.

At least 16 sites along the city’s crappy water pipe need repair. Construction is for about a month until late September.

Costs will be on top of the $20 million to $25 million already out the door fixing the previous rupture in the water pipe and the dangerous hot spots along the pipe.

At least no one will have to boil their water.

“I know this is not the news anybody wants to hear,” says Mayor Jyoti Gondek.

You think.

Gondek says delivering the “heavy news” was “fairly difficult.”

Not as difficult as being on the receiving end.

How did this water pipe get this bad while the Calgary city council majority the last several years spent humongous amounts of dough here, there and everywhere and devoted much of their energy imposing their version of the world on the rest of us?

Who is being held accountable?

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The answer we get for the first question is no answer.

The answer we get for the second question will almost certainly turn out to be no one at the Big Blue Playpen.

Bringing anybody up on the carpet might involve hurting someone’s feelings and set a dangerous precedent.

Sonya Sharp is the councillor who represents Bowness, the part of the city that’s been on the short end of the stick on this water pipe failure.

Word is Sharp sometimes gets in trouble with city hall snowflakes because she doesn’t sugarcoat what’s happening at city hall on the taxpayer dime.

Sharp speaks directly again on Wednesday.

“People are going to lose their minds,” says the councillor, of the latest water pipe woes. 

“They’re tired. This is exhausting, Calgarians have been let down.”

“As much as I want to tell Calgarians, thank you for your patience, you’re so resilient, they don’t want to hear that garbage. I know they’re disappointed. I know they’re frustrated.”

“We did not want to end summer this way. We did not want to go back to school this way. Yeah, they’re going be losing their minds.”

“And this stuff didn’t happen overnight, this critical failure has been brewing for years.”

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That’s the point, isn’t it? This isn’t a hail storm coming out of nowhere. This is no act of God.

And this news comes as the numbers tell us Gondek is the most unpopular Calgary mayor ever and the same goes for city council with its Gondek majority.

Sharp says to many folks it appears nothing good is coming out of city hall these days. Everything appears to be unravelling.

Then there is city hall constantly bigfooting into people’s lives.

“People are tired of being told what to do. They just want to live their normal lives.”

The councillor thinks if this was the only pain in the butt from city hall people might react differently.

But it isn’t.

“I think the patience of Calgarians has run out.”

And Sharp asks: If Calgarians aren’t awake now what is it going to take?

Many Calgarians do have an amazingly high tolerance level for lousy politicians.

Dan McLean, another councillor not afraid to speak up, says an independent look-see into the city’s so-called water crisis can’t come soon enough.

No one has been picked to lead the investigation and no one has been picked to do the investigating and the probe isn’t expected to wrap up until after the next city election in the fall of next year.

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Just sayin’.

“There has to be some accountability,” says McLean.

“That’s what’s missing.”

He says many Calgarians have lost faith in city hall. He hears some folks want to see someone fired.

“It’s one thing after another. Everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. What else can go wrong? Can something go right?”

“Where does the buck stop? There’s only so much the population can take before there’s full-on revolt.”

rbell@postmedia.com

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