CALGARY, ALTA \u2014 The Alberta government has ordered a sweeping third-party investigation into Calgary\u2019s ongoing watermain problems, which have again forced residents to ration their use.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Nenshi is now leader of the Opposition NDP and the main opponent of Premier Danielle Smith\u2019s government, with an election slated for next year.<\/p>\n
And Smith has already placed some of the blame for the water crisis on council actions when Nenshi was mayor.<\/p>\n
Williams told a news conference the government has the authority and responsibility to investigate when core services fail in Alberta\u2019s largest city.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis authority is rarely used,\u201d Williams said, but added, \u201cThey\u2019re not political tools and they\u2019re certainly not something that the government launches lightly.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The investigation will be headed by David Goldie, a former chair of Alberta\u2019s energy regulator.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The main supplies 60 per cent of the treated water and has ruptured twice in the last two years, forcing shutdowns for repairs.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Smith\u2019s government, however, has pushed for a fuller accounting.<\/p>\n
In January, Williams demanded thousands of documents from the city dating back decades \u2014 even from city council meetings not open to the public.<\/p>\n
Nenshi was mayor from 2010 to 2021, and Smith has already sought to tie the water woes to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe seeds of the problem today, make no mistake, began under previous administrations,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you have to ask the question, well, \u2018Who was the mayor after the floods of 2013 until he decided to retire?\u2019 And that was Naheed Nenshi,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At the time, Nenshi called Smith\u2019s accusations \u201ctotal garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a92025 The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CALGARY, ALTA \u2014 The Alberta government has ordered a sweeping third-party investigation into Calgary\u2019s ongoing watermain problems, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-542352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-calgary","10":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}