Braid: City hall's summer slumber and Gondek's Europe trip wrecked faith in water rules

Article content

Calgarians are fed up and voting with their taps. The city’s recent handling of the water main crisis gives them every reason to go out and water the plants.

Not that we should — this is still a serious problem. But city hall itself has made the whole crisis seem overblown.

They stalled the latest feeder line repairs until the worst possible moment; just when summer is ending, vacationers are pouring back into the city and students are starting classes.

Article content

Normal water demand is sure to spike at exactly this moment. But, sure enough, the city scolds us for using too much.

Worse, Mayor Jyoti Gondek went to Norway during the repair hiatus, ostensibly for a trade mission.

Trade in what — water pipes? No, there isn’t any actual trade news. Gondek got herself elected vice-president of something called the World Energy Cities Partnership.

This group of mayors is supposed to support the transition to greener energy in collaboration with the energy industry. Very noble. Conveniently, it also supplies Gondek with a title nicely suited to a post-mayoral international career.

Gondek is fast heading for life after the mayor’s office, starting with the election in October 2025.

She did a pretty good job of handling the original water main uproar in June, in my minority view.

But then city hall went on holiday, she went to Europe and the water-main plot went missing for many people in this city. People have to be convinced all over again. This time it’s not so easy.

Why the delay in repairs? Officials say it was necessary to organize for complex, multiple work sites.

Article content

Article content

But the city acted at light speed when the line ruptured on June 5. The job was done as quickly as humanly possible.

The latest work should have begun as soon as new faults were discovered. The city could be halfway through restrictions that are expected to last until Sept. 23. Bitter experience shows that’s a target, not a guarantee.

We’re now warned that if restrictions aren’t followed, water stored underground could be tainted and we’ll be boiling drinking water in winter.

All this must have been known a month ago. Winter weather is now only two months away. But city hall can’t miss that summer slumber.

The hardest knock on council these days is that Gondek and her slim majority spend too much energy on aspirations unrelated to the nuts and bolts of running a city.

The climate emergency declaration, a stupid paper bag bylaw, the badly handled upzoning debate — everything but the hard, thankless stuff, like making sure a water line doesn’t erupt.

The council minority, including Sonya Sharp, Andre Chabot and others, constantly call for more focus on Calgary’s practical problems.

Article content

But this council won’t do that, and they’re not alone.

Studies of these water main issues show that across North America, the problems are ignored until there’s a crisis. The money always goes to the visible projects that win votes.

It’s often pointed out that the money already spent on the Green Line LRT project, $1.5 billion, could have solved Calgary’s underground infrastructure problems now and into the future.

Politicians don’t do that; certainly not these Calgary politicians. They seem to prefer the attention they get from managing a crisis to ensuring the crisis never happens.

Calgarians would not be in this fix at all if successive councils had done their job.

A decade ago there was serious talk of building a new feeder line to the north around Nose Hill. In the end, this was judged to be too expensive and disruptive, even as the city continued to grow and water demand rose.

Retired city hall officials agree that if the line had been built, the Bearspaw South feeder could be repaired with no threat to the city’s overall water supply. Most Calgarians wouldn’t even notice.

All this is galling in the extreme, but it doesn’t mean Calgarians should ignore restrictions. We’re still stuck with a ruptured pipe, the perfect symbol of a ruptured council.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

X: @DonBraid

Article content