Calgary city councillors approved a new water efficiency strategy – fully intact – despite a push to have voluntary participation in an outdoor watering schedule.

The item was presented at the April 28 Regular Meeting of Calgary city council, after being first approved at committee earlier this year.

Since that time, some councillors expressed a desire to have voluntary adherence to the outdoor water schedule and wanted amendments to reflect that. However, those amendments were defeated. The bylaw, according to city documents, will be enforced on the day it is passed.

The Water Efficiency Plan is a multi-faceted strategy to reduce the per capita water demand by 20 per cent by 2040. It included an infrastructure investment to deal with Calgary’s 20 per cent water loss (leaks), accelerating water meter replacement, the outdoor watering schedule for summer months to deal with peak water use periods, proposed “conservation-oriented” pricing and other education and conservation measures.

Rehana Rajabali, leader of Environmental Planning and Policy at the City of Calgary, said the updated plan (first delivered in 2005) modeled future water demand, and the plan took into consideration the feedback from city staff, industry partners and community organizations to understand operational needs of the City of Calgary.

“This work ensured that the plan is practical, feasible and fit for the moment that we are in,” she said.

Rajabali said that while the infrastructure leak fixes will result in one of the largest water savings, the scale and complexity of Calgary’s water system means that those investments will take some time – at least 10 years, she said.

“In the meantime, summer peak demand is a key pressure point,” Rajabali said.

“Water use can increase up to 40 per cent on peak summer day compared to the average winter day, and this is why early actions like the lawn and landscape watering schedule are being proposed.”

Managing the peak demand is key: Panel chair

Siegfried Kiefer, chair of the Bearspaw South feeder main independent review panel and current advisor on Calgary’s water system rehabilitation, said that managing the peak use is key in any utility, particularly as a means to limit downstream cost to infrastructure. He noted that it’s the same in utilities such as natural gas and electricity.

“Whatever you can do to manage that peak demand to a more reasonable level is significant in terms of saving your customers costs,” he said.

“I see this as being prudent, justifiable, and I’m going to say just rational, in terms of where this city needs to go.”

Kiefer also pointed out that most of the municipalities surrounding Calgary already have these kinds of outdoor watering schedules in place.

“I would say the measures that Calgary is contemplating in this water efficiency plan are not outlandish in comparison to communities surrounding you. I would say Calgary is in effect catching up now,” he said.

He said that something needs to be done, and there’s an acute need this summer, with ongoing work happening with the Bearspaw South feeder main pushing less overall volume due to its volatility.

Kiefer said that he understood there’s a political ramification anytime people are told they have to do something on a certain day.

“But look, I now understand that Thursday mornings, I have to wheel my garbage bin out to the street side to get picked up. And it only happens on Thursdays, and I don’t leave it there all week. I put it away,” he said.

“Calgarians are, I think, understanding people, and we understand that we’ve got a need to manage our resources wisely. They have adapted their electricity consumption to try not to consume during peak periods. They’ve adapted, turned their thermostat down a couple degrees to save on their natural gas bills. If they realize that by not watering in the middle of the day, they can save some money on their long-term water costs, I think they will adapt to it too.”

The debate

Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal said that Calgary is already behind the curve, particularly because the city has been focused on the supply side. This addresses the demand side of the equation.

“What we are asking is putting a proper mechanism in place, which will be more of an education, which will also have consistency and predictability for our homeowners, when and how they can do it,” he said.

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot said that he was recently at an Alberta Municipalities meeting about water last week. They brought up a municipal water discussion paper that set out many of these actions back in 2012 and other cities started to do them right away.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel here,” he said.  

“This has been in existence for some time. In fact, we’re kind of behind the eight-ball here, insofar as implementation is concerned.”

Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Yule said that among the emails he received on the item, he saw the submission from Chair Kiefer. That gave him pause, and he remembered the overarching theme of a lack of action for 20 years that led to the Bearspaw South feeder main break.

“This decision today that we’re making is more for 100 years down the road and so I hope that they look back to today and see that we instilled some of these habits for Calgarians that help people 100 years down the road when the Bow glacier is melted, when the water source is less than it is today,” he said.

Ward 12 Coun. Mike Jamieson said he put out a survey to residents in his area and then put it out citywide and received 3,200-plus responses. He said that 90 per cent of the respondents opposed the plan in its current form.

“There is no question in my mind that there is widespread opposition to this current plan in its current form. I want to emphasize this point,” he said.

“The level of opposition to the water efficiency plan is significantly greater than what I saw during the blanket rezoning debate, and we know that how engaged and how divided the city was on that issue, so I believe we need to take this very seriously.”

Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean said this was an overreach, and that the City of Calgary needs to take care of its own house first.

“Maybe it’s my frugal Scottish background, but I abhor waste. I’m all about efficiencies, but I was also telling you, get your own house in order before we start directing other people and telling them what to do,” he said.

“We’re losing a massive over 20 per cent of our water through leaks.”

Ward 6 Coun. John Pantazopoulos wanted to change the bylaw to make the outdoor watering schedule voluntary, which was defeated. He did put forward a motion arising to look back at the data on the impact of the water efficiency plan, particularly around the outdoor watering schedule.

This was defeated, as there is a basic reporting structure included in the overarching plan.