Calgarians likely won’t know more about what led to the rupture of one of Calgary’s largest water feeder mains for a year, after a draft review plan was tossed out.
Councillors on the Infrastructure and Planning Committee (IPC) rejected the draft guidelines that included a four-month timeline for committee selection, investigation and reporting on the June 5 Bearspaw feeder main break.
A third-party, independent review has been promised since the early days of the month-long water service disruption and repair. The initial guidelines called for the review to examine factors that contributed to the break, possible root causes, and an assessment of current asset management practices for water distribution.
Along with that, the third-party review was to look at how the City of Calgary responded to the incident, including communication with the public.
Coun. Sonya Sharp told LWC earlier this week that the draft guidelines raised “red flags” for her. She was worried that a third-party, independent review was first being submitted to the City of Calgary’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) David Duckworth. Sharp also said that there were areas that should be included in the scope of the review that weren’t and that the timeline was dubious.
“With this catastrophic failure that took maybe years in the making, whatever that postmortem needs to look like, do it right,” Sharp told reporters on Wednesday.
“So, if you need time, we will give you time. We can manage comments and media and all that. But when it’s something like this that impacted Calgary for a month, get it right.”
Mayor Jyoti Gondek has said that she’s presented councillors with a couple of budget items for consideration to ensure the city has a handle on their water infrastructure. When asked if the review needed to come before budget asks, she said cash may have to wait, too.
They have made budget decisions in the past with preliminary information or emerging issues, Sharp said.
“This would maybe then need to go to the 2025 midcycle in order to get some funding for infrastructure,” she said.
“But again, until we actually know what magnitude of costs we’re dealing with, we can’t talk about any of that.”
Calgarians want answers
CAO Duckworth acknowledged that this is the first time that the City of Calgary has done an independent review like this. He said they’re learning as they go.
“What we heard from council today is they have some concerns. We need to make sure first and foremost this review is independent,” Duckworth said.
“It’s independent of council and it’s independent of administration.”
Duckworth characterized their initial four-month review timeline as “aggressive.” After speaking with professionals in the industry, they said a minimum of 12 months is needed to properly review what happened. That said, he knows Calgarians are looking for answers.
“They’ve got many questions, and we don’t have some of the answers to the questions,” Duckworth said.
“So, they, Calgarians, have a right to get answers to their questions. It’s going to take some time. I think we would prefer to have answers to the questions as quickly as possible.”
Ward 2 Coun. Jennifer Wyness said she’s happy to see the initial guidelines filed and abandoned. She said there should be an open call to find the best people to evaluate the city’s processes. Wyness thought the whole process should be put off until September.
“We are also trying to evaluate a pipe that is still not fully operational,” Wyness said.
“The crisis is still going on and we’ve moved on. But what happens if we get full pressure and it blows? Now, we’ve set up a process that is missing key process failings.”
There will be an update coming to the July 16 Public Hearing meeting and the July 30 Regular Meeting of council on the set up of a third-party review panel.
