Tens of thousands of files on the Bearspaw South feeder main are headed to the province in a ‘significant’ administration effort to meet a tight Alberta government timeline.
In mid-January, the Government of Alberta demanded a voluminous selection of documents pertaining to the Bearspaw South feeder main, Calgary’s water system and its risk and asset management practices related to infrastructure.
At the time, Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams wrote in a letter that the steps taken thus far had been “commendable,” but their people wanted to review the past work.
“I understand repairs are ongoing and the city aims to restore water service as soon as possible; however, I am concerned about implications for the capacity of municipal services and the confidence that Calgarians may have in the city’s ability to sustain this essential service,” Williams’ letter read.
“I believe residents of Calgary and neighbouring municipalities that depend on the city for water services have valid concerns that such an incident may recur.”
On Tuesday, City of Calgary Chief Administrative Officer David Duckworth said that they are on track to meet the 11:59 p.m. deadline on Jan. 26.
“I believe we are in the process of transferring approximately 20,000 files,” he said.
“There will be a very small number of files, we’re thinking somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50 to 100 that are actually stored off site that we still need to retrieve and upload. So, those will be done at a different date, but by and large, we are on track.”
The sheer number of documents being sent to the province raised the eyebrow of Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot.
“It begs the question of, what is it that I don’t know? I certainly don’t know anything about the 20,000 files that you’re talking about,” he said.
Costs are being tracked: CAO
CAO Duckworth said that councillor will be sent a link that contains all of the documents, with some of the files being confidential. He said they would try to provide a summary.
“It goes all the way back to 2004, so we will do our best to make sure, when we provide you the link, access to the information, so that you have it at your disposal, and secondly, that we can summarize it in some form,” Duckworth said.
Both Chabot and Mayor Jeromy Farkas asked if the costs were being tracked.
“As was mentioned before, the first question that came to mind is, how many staff are going to be involved in putting together all this information?” Chabot said.
Duckworth said that they don’t have the exact number of staff, time, and overall cost at this time.
“I can confirm it’s significant,” he said.
They will report back the amount of time, employees and cost of this provincially-imposed endeavour.
Ward 4 DJ Kelly said that he hopes the province comes back with a swift review of the information.
“I’m hopeful that they respond back as quickly as we’ve responded to them, so that we can implement their recommendations into, as we move forward, on our decisions with the water utility that are going to be coming very quickly here over the next few months,” he said.
