On Saturday, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, alarmed by the skyrocketing level of body odour in the city, declared a state of emergency.
Just kidding. Not about the state of emergency: that’s real enough, thanks to the catastrophic rupture thirteen days ago of a giant water feeder main which supplies sixty percent of the city’s potable water, and the subsequent identification by robot of five other “hot spots” in the same massive pipe in need of urgent repair.
I’m not really kidding about the body odour either, even if that wasn’t the impetus for the mayor’s emergency declaration. Calgarians have been urged to conserve water wherever possible, including limiting bathing and foregoing doing our laundry; and most of us have been doing our bit. The news on the weekend that this will last for up to another five weeks was rather dispiriting; it’s gonna get downright funky around here.
Not that the mayor is too fussed. “No one has to worry what they look or smell like,” she said at a press conference, somehow managing to look perfectly decked-out and impeccably coiffed despite her own (presumed) lack of grooming.
As for outdoor watering, there’s an outright ban, much to the chagrin of gardeners helplessly watching their carefully nurtured vegetable patches cry out for moisture. My kids, determined to salvage my own humble efforts, have been stuffing backpacks with containers and scooting down to the Elbow River to fill them up. Their resourcefulness is officially discouraged by the city, naturally:
The past few days have brought blessed respite, with a torrent of rain saturating parched landscapes and filling rain barrels to the hilt. No rain barrels, no problem: the potholes that litter our city’s streets like confetti are filled to the brim: you can scoop water to your heart’s content. (Although some of those potholes are so deep I’m sure the rain has drained straight through to Port-aux-Francais in the French Southern Territories on the exact opposite side of the globe).
So we’re good for a few days. But alas, there’s scant rain in the forecast for the next two weeks.
And don’t you dare cheat by sneaking out at midnight to run the garden hose over your tender plants. Your neighbours are watching. The snitch line has gone crazy. Peace and love, everyone.
The main rupture has been mended, but work is just beginning on the other weak spots. I’m no expert, but common sense might seem to dictate that getting the water flowing for a week or so to allow Calgarians a breather, and then tackling the other locations in multiple planned stages, would be a good idea. Government bureaucrats with sense, however, are as common as anorexics at a hot dog eating contest.
The mayor’s initial response to the rupture was to point indignant fingers of blame at other levels of government; it made one wonder if she’s ever absorbed a single lesson in crisis management. She’s toned it down since then, belatedly realizing that solving this crisis requires all hands on deck. Hands, by the way, which include experts in the oil and gas industry. It took Gondek eleven days to reach out to industry pipeline professionals, but she eventually got there (oh, how that must have hurt her green-loving climate-emergency-declaring heart).
As Don Braid reported on Sunday in The Calgary Herald, we’ve known since 2004 that the quality of many of our underground concrete conduits is subpar. A big water main break under McKnight Boulevard at the time led to the discovery that the pipe’s 20-year-old concrete had crumbled to dust. The same type of concrete pour was used for much of Calgary’s underground pipeline infrastructure between 1955 and 1990, according to Braid’s report. Calgary isn’t alone: many Canadians cities are in the same predicament — Calgary is the canary in a water main, so to speak.
But politicians are experts at kicking balls down the road. They’ve a hard enough time dealing with the problems we can see (see potholes, above); and underground pipes are literally out of sight and therefore out of mind. Until disaster strikes.
The mayor in 2004 was Dave Bronconnier. He was followed by Naheed Nenshi in 2010, who presided until 2021. Neither of them bothered to ensure the big feeder main from Bearspaw was carefully inspected and repaired. And now the mess is in Gondek’s lap.
It’s worth mentioning that Gondek and her council recently approved, despite a storm of protest from Calgarians, a blanket rezoning policy designed to ramp up density in existing neighbourhoods. Piling more pressure on old water mains just waiting to fail seems the opposite of brilliant. Perhaps now they’ll realize the folly of their ways and reverse course. (Don’t hold your breath.)
It feels these days like the sky is falling in Blue Sky City (that’s what we call ourselves now, after a recent $5 million rebranding exercise led by Calgary Economic Development — our tax dollars work oh-so-hard in these parts).
But take heart: we have public art to inspire us. We’re set to spend 2.25 million taxpayer dollars on a 70-foot-hight sculpture outside the newly renovated BMO Centre. It’s name? The Spirit of Water. I’m not making it up.
We have a rich history of this sort of careful stewardship of citizen dollars. On Nenshi’s watch, for example, we dropped a cool million on a giant blue ring adorned with streetlight antennae to preside over an overpass in the northeast.
It’s art, see? So uplifting. So inspiring.
Filling potholes and maintaining pipelines? Yawn. Why would we spend money on something so boring?
Well said Ed!
Very well said. That blanket upzoning decision is looking more and more irresponsible every day! Until our critical infrastructure is in good repair it is such a disastrous idea. Realistically every councillor who has say in civic government is responsible for NOT addressing this critical issue. Thinking a brilliant response to a crisis is all that is necessary is hubris, and this mayor was never gonna do it right anyways. Knowing Stampede was only a month away when this all started she should have reached out to the pipeline experts on day one.