CALGARY, ALTA — The Alberta government has ordered a sweeping third-party investigation into Calgary’s ongoing watermain problems, which have again forced residents to ration their use.
Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams says the probe is not political even though it is expected to examine the actions and decisions of former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi.
Nenshi is now leader of the Opposition NDP and the main opponent of Premier Danielle Smith’s government, with an election slated for next year.
And Smith has already placed some of the blame for the water crisis on council actions when Nenshi was mayor.
Williams told a news conference the government has the authority and responsibility to investigate when core services fail in Alberta’s largest city.
“This authority is rarely used,” Williams said, but added, “They’re not political tools and they’re certainly not something that the government launches lightly.”
He added, “This is not about assigning blame or pointing fingers, but to learn about the system, the decisions made and understand accountability and understand the next steps forward.”
The investigation will be headed by David Goldie, a former chair of Alberta’s energy regulator.
Goldie will have the power to compel documents and witnesses, similar to a public judicial inquiry, and is expected to report back on his findings by the fall.
The move comes as Calgary residents and those in surrounding communities have been asked yet again to reduce water use due to the ailing Bearspaw South Feeder Main.
The main supplies 60 per cent of the treated water and has ruptured twice in the last two years, forcing shutdowns for repairs.
The current round of repairs is expected to last a month as crews work on the existing pipe. At the same time, work is being done to replace the ailing line, with that work expected to be done by year’s end.
The most recent break happened in December, sending a torrent of water that stranded cars and buckled the roadbed of a city thoroughfare. Residents are currently being asked to take shorter showers, reduce toilet flushes and cut back on laundry and dishwasher loads.
The line also failed in the summer of 2024. An independent panel released its review into that rupture in early January, attributing the cause and the overall fragility of the system to decades of underinvestment.
In its report, the panel traced the issue back to another watermain rupture in 2004, which it said should have raised alarms about the health of other city water pipes.
It said a number of projects to inspect water pipes or carry out maintenance were deferred over the years in favour of other priorities. The panel wrote that no one city council or staff member was to blame, as it said it believed that nobody fully knew the gravity of the situation.
Smith’s government, however, has pushed for a fuller accounting.
In January, Williams demanded thousands of documents from the city dating back decades — even from city council meetings not open to the public.
Nenshi was mayor from 2010 to 2021, and Smith has already sought to tie the water woes to him.
“The seeds of the problem today, make no mistake, began under previous administrations,” Smith told reporters earlier this year. Smith said severe floods caused by heavy rainfall in 2013 should have led the city to do widespread investigations of its water system.
“And you have to ask the question, well, ‘Who was the mayor after the floods of 2013 until he decided to retire?’ And that was Naheed Nenshi,” she said.
At the time, Nenshi called Smith’s accusations “total garbage.”
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