City council not told city's water system was at risk in 2017, says former mayor Nenshi

Former mayor Naheed Nenshi said he and city council did not know Calgary's water system was at high risk 2017 when the Bearspaw feeder main was flagged for inspection.

City officials repeatedly recommended an inspection of Calgary's key water feeder main in 2017, 2019 and 2022, according to an independent review of the Bearspaw's catastrophic 2024 break.

But the inspections were continuously delayed, the report notes, and multiple city councils didn't receive the expert information and support needed to oversee Calgary's water system.

Nenshi, who served as mayor from 2010 to 2021, said he and council didn't receive information in 2017 that the Bearspaw was marked as high-risk.

“The report is saying that that kind of information didn’t filter up to the key decision-makers, which is a big problem,” Nenshi said on CBC Radio’s The Calgary Eyeopener on Thursday.

He currently leads Alberta's NDP opposition.

LISTEN | Former mayor discusses report criticizing Calgary's water governance:

The 2024 Bearspaw feeder main's break led to months of water restrictions, which is a situation Calgarians again find themselves in after another catastrophic break occurred last week.

The independent panel report, released Wednesday, found deep and systemic challenges within Calgary's water system that dated back decades. The report notes a risk in the Bearspaw was first identified after a pipe in northeast Calgary ruptured in 2004, an event which Nenshi said he only learned about in 2024, well after his time in office ended.

Nenshi said a mistake the city made during his tenure was to focus on growth and building pipes in new parts of the city, at the expense of needed maintenance for existing infrastructure.

WATCH | Calgary mayor urges rapid action to improve city's water system:

While the report found gaps in the information and support council received, Nenshi said he takes some responsibility for errors that were made during his time in office.

“I can’t say this was all administration’s fault because your job, as the board if you like, as city council, is to make sure that you are asking all the right questions and digging deeply in all the right ways,” said Nenshi.

“Clearly we should have been digging more deeply, and I will take responsibility for that.”

Nenshi said city hall made cuts across the board after an economic downturn in 2015, including to water-system maintenance, to keep taxes and fees low for residents who were worried about the cost of living.

As a result, the resilience of Calgary's water system was weakened.

“The population grew and [the Bearspaw] turned out to be more critical than we thought it was in terms of demand, but also, as we know, more dangerous than we thought it would be," said Nenshi.

Danielle Smith placed blame on Nenshi

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith weighed in on the question of accountability for Calgary's recent water main breaks, last week.

Smith placed some of the blame on Nenshi, now her political rival. She criticized Nenshi for not inspecting the Bearspaw after major flooding hit the city in 2013.

Nenshi called the premier's comments "total garbage," pointing to the lack of any feeder main breaks while he was mayor. He said the provincial government was looking for someone to blame for political gain.

Smith also suggested the province will consider imposing more oversight over Calgary's water system, similar to how it regulates other utilities like natural gas and electricity. But Nenshi argues Calgary has more expertise already in place to run its own water supply.

“It would be wasteful and getting in the way of elected officials for the province to jump in,” said Nenshi.

WATCH | Culture of deferral at city hall led to 2024 water main break, finds independent panel:

“Where the province should jump in is with infrastructure funding. The province has systematically defunded infrastructure across governments of different stripes for a really, really long time, and certainly this is where we need the assistance."

Administration also takes responsibility

Calgary's head administrator, David Duckworth, said his organization is ready to implement the panel's recommendations, and also accepted responsibility for the current emergency situation the city finds itself in.

“I personally take responsibility and am accountable for the services that we deliver every single day, and so does my team,” said Duckworth, Calgary's chief administrative officer since 2019, and general manager of the utilities department before that.

“We take this very seriously. We apologize to Calgarians for being where we are today.”

Duckworth said his main takeaway from the report is that over two decades, members of city administration lacked the ability to escalate concerns. He said the city needs to do a better job to understand trade-offs in the budget between more immediate concerns and infrastructure work that could be critical in the future.

Council moving forward with panel recommendations

Siegfried Kiefer, a former ATCO executive who chaired the independent panel, said his report found the city's risk management work wasn't as thorough as the panel expected.

That led to appropriate information not reaching city council.

Kiefer added there's no way for council to digest the risks of every line item they're responsible for, but that it's critical for city management to flag what should be raised to the attention of decision-makers in city hall.

“Insufficient detail was provided all the way up the chain to senior executives in the administration and hence into council,” he said on The Calgary Eyeopener on Thursday.

LISTEN | Independent panel lead breaks down latest review of Calgary water system:

He added part of the problem comes from assessments finding that smaller ruptures in smaller pieces of pipe were more urgent, rather than high-consequence but low-likelihood pipe breaks.

City council voted on Wednesday to move forward with all of the panel's recommendations, which included accelerating work to twin the Bearspaw main by early next year, and establishing a dedicated water utility department and ultimately a city-owned corporation.

Nenshi said the decision to introduce a new utility company is up to the current council, but he warned the city can learn from what worked and didn't work with the city-owned electrical provider Enmax, after it led to much higher costs.