Alberta premier says province might impose oversight of Calgary’s water system after latest break

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is calling Calgary’s second catastrophic break of the same feeder main in less than two years a failure of oversight, and says it might be time for the province to step in and take some responsibility for supervising the city’s water system.

The premier also put the blame for the infrastructure failure squarely on the now-leader of the provincial NDP, Naheed Nenshi, who was Calgary’s mayor from 2010 to 2021. 

Smith said Nenshi bears political responsibility for not taking more action to inspect the feeder main in the years after the massive 2013 floods.

“You have to ask the question, ‘well huh, who was the mayor after the floods of 2013 until he just decided to retire?’ And that was Naheed Nenshi,” Smith said. 

“All of this should have been identified early so that now subsequent mayors are not having to deal with this.” 

For his part, Nenshi pushed back, calling Smith’s comments “total garbage,” and pointed to the fact there were no feeder main breaks during his time in office.

“This is very emblematic of this government. Rather than actually trying to help, or solve the problem, or act as adults in an emergency, they lash out, they look for someone to blame and they look for political gain,” Nenshi said. 

Provincial oversight

Smith said her government will consider implementing more oversight of the city’s water system, as she says they do with other utilities, like natural gas and electricity. 

“Water systems are 100 per cent, at the moment, municipal responsibility,” Smith said Friday at a news conference in Calgary. 

That oversight could include the province issuing repair orders as it sees fit. Smith said future provincial funding could be tied to the province having greater oversight of the water system.

But Kerry Black, an associate civil engineering professor at the University of Calgary, said the city has the level of expertise to oversee the system, and is best equipped to handle it. 

She said the provincial role, along with the federal government, should be to provide funding when it comes to badly-needed critical infrastructure upgrades. 

“This could have happened in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, anywhere,” Black said. “It’s not a question of pointing fingers and figuring out who’s to blame. It’s a question of, how are we going to manage this right now?” 

Smith pointed to issues with leaks in Calgary’s water system as an example for why the province might need to intervene. 

Data from the city showed Calgary lost more than 20 per cent of its water through leaks for at least the last five years. 

A letter from BILD Calgary to the city last year said Calgary’s losses are much higher than compared to Edmonton, where the water system averages about five per cent in water loss.  Alberta Municipalities has set a goal of 10 per cent water loss goal for urban municipalities by 2027.

Calgary is currently in the midst of an update of its water efficiency plan, which could see programs and technologies updated to reduce water loss through leaks.

Black said leakage is an issue for cities across North America, and that Calgary has proactive monitoring to stay on top of leaks. 

“To say that somehow that level of leakage is an indication of a system that’s not working well …is really damaging,” she said.  

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas has been pushing for the release of an independent report into the 2024 water main break, and has vowed council will implement the report’s recommendations. 

Smith said her cabinet is also waiting to see the report to determine what kind of oversight they may decide to implement.

The report should be finalized and sent to council next week, and the independent review panel will present their findings at council’s executive committee meeting Jan. 13, a city spokesperson said Friday in an email to CBC.

“The pipe was operating within the threshold developed with industry experts and we were monitoring it, prepared to make additional repairs if we started to see the condition of the pipe change.”