Leong: Looking for someone to blame for Calgary's water crisis? It's complicated

With Calgary’s drinking water system crippled by a catastrophic rupture in the Bearspaw South feeder main for the second time in less than two years, it’s natural to want someone to blame.

Some folks out there, including Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, seem eager to lay everything at the feet of those in charge in recent civic administrations — and conveniently, that would include Naheed Nenshi, a former mayor of Calgary who’s now leader of the Opposition Alberta NDP.

There is limited validity to that argument.

Despite the installation of equipment meant to catch problems before catastrophic pipe breaks, we’ve been told the gear didn’t detect any issues before the latest blowout on Dec. 30.

And until the initial spectacular water main break in June 2024, the extremely fragile condition of the pipe, which usually carries some 60 per cent of the city’s treated water to customers all over the region, was not widely known.

Indeed, the full extent of the problems might not even have been known to people in charge: it was revealed shortly after the first pipe break there were plans to inspect the feeder main for deficiencies. Alas, time was not on Calgary’s side.

When emergency repairs afforded inspectors the opportunity time to peer inside Calgary’s major water artery, they found dozens more spots needing immediate patching.

As it turns out, none of this should have surprised anyone: the type of pre-stressed concrete cylindrical pipe installed on that line had experienced shortened life-spans in other cities across North America. Specific to Calgary, we would later learn the type of soil where the pipe was installed also contributed to the pipe’s early degradation.

What was never made clear was how many people at the City of Calgary knew about the propensity of these concrete pipes to prematurely expire and what sense of urgency about this existed in recent years, deep in the corridors of bureaucracy.

It was explained, however, why the plan to inspect the pipe was complicated: it would have been necessary to turn the water off in the feeder main.

And as we’ve all learned together twice in the last 18 months, moving water around the city without using the Bearspaw South feeder main is literally impossible. Otherwise, city officials wouldn’t be pleading with us (again!) to take short showers and limit toilet flushes while banning all types of water use outdoors while crews patch up our crippled water system.

The fact this is even a problem lies with decisions made long before any contemporary city council.

Sometime in the distant political past, our leaders decided they didn’t want to spend the money for critical redundancy in our water distribution system.

Maybe they didn’t think residents would accept the need for such an upgrade, or maybe they couldn’t stomach the idea of having to collect the taxes necessary to pay for it.

Whatever the reason, the result is an infrastructure deficit turned into a living nightmare. On top of fixing the Bearspaw South feeder main, Calgary is now also having to fast-track multiple redundant feeder mains all at once.

A similarly spectacular feeder main break in Montreal in August 2024 didn’t lead to months of water restrictions: Through the magic of backup systems, repairs could be made with minimum inconvenience.

Beyond local political missteps, there’s the more fundamental issue with the sketchy understanding of concrete pipes five decades ago.

According to various news reports and other literature published over the last two decades, a certain type of pre-stressed concrete cylindrical pipes manufactured and sold in the 1970s was hailed as a marvel of engineering, a less-expensive variant described to be just as sturdy as some pricier counterparts, including other kinds of PCCP conduits and steel pipes.

What city anywhere could say no to a deal like that? In hindsight, it was too good to be true — and Calgary is learning about it the hardest possible way.

rleong@postmedia.com

Find Ricky on X and on Bluesky

Related