Once again, Calgarians are expected to behave like camels.

Our mission, fellow dromedaries, is to rescue city hall from its most expensive policy and operational failure in decades.

Braid: Huge cost of water pipe projects is heading straight for Calgary ratepayers Back to video

The city has shut down the old, crumbling, explosive Bearspaw South feeder line.

For the next month, that means shorter showers, fewer flushes, deferred washing of dishes and clothes.

Comply and the city will consider you a “water hero.”

Your weekday lunchtime roundup of curated links, news highlights, analysis and features.

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The restrictions are almost routine by now. But the cost of this civic calamity, caused by dithering and inaction of officials still on the city payroll, is finally becoming clear.

Last week, administration asked council to approve more than $609.5 million in new spending to solve the water woes.

We’re just starting to hear about the hit to taxpayers. Next year, annual water charges will rise by $200.

There will be more, much more. Count on it.

Most of this massive capital demand is needed for work that should have been completed years ago.

The Bearspaw South Feeder Main carries 60 per cent of the city’s water supply. Officials and councillors didn’t need rotted pipe on their desks to grasp how vulnerable that made Calgary.

That line is the immediate crisis, but $220 million in new funding is also required for the new north line.

That crucial project was stalled for more than a decade by successive councils, even though everyone knew it was essential to protect the city from Bearspaw breakdowns.

If the north line were in service today, the Bearspaw line could be fixed with no citywide water restrictions.

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In an ideal world, no repairs of the existing Bearspaw line would even be needed. The new steel replacement line would already be operating.

Remarkably, $40 million is being spent right now to keep fixing a water line that will be permanently shut down within months.

Mayor Jeromy Farkas isn’t casting blame on past councils or administrations. He even praised ex-mayor Jyoti Gondek on Monday.

Her work after the 2024 break, he said, laid the groundwork for today’s response.

If you’re angry, the mayor says, take it out on him, because he’s the one in charge. He’s not interested in dissing Gondek and former councils.

He added that “nobody could have expected” the catastrophic water main break of 2024.

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Braid: Huge cost of water pipe projects is heading straight for Calgary ratepayers Columnists

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Farkas is handling this crisis very well, in my view, but that’s letting officials off the hook.

There were many signs that this type of concrete wire pipe was corroding. The evidence went back 20 years, to the McKnight Boulevard flood of 2004.

The Bearspaw South Feeder Main panel, in a devastating report, found city hall was purpose-built to avoid difficult choices through “consensus decision-making.”

That meant many officials had to agree before anything — including expensive pipeline work — could be approved.

Officials developed “a culture of risk tolerance and decision deferral,” the panel said.

They meant decisions on high-danger risks were always deferred, with a prayer that they never happen.

There was also evidence that officials were worried about Bearspaw. Somehow, this information never quite got to city council.

The conclusion is clear: city hall failed Calgarians disastrously.

Farkas sounds forgiving today. That may not last when contracts come up for renewal.

The real price of this fiasco is now down in hard numbers.

Cost of the new Bearspaw project: $439 million, including $40 million for repairing a line heading for the scrap heap.

Cost of the new, essential north water servicing line: $553 million in total, with $222 million in new money required.

They also need $15 million for advanced metering.

All this is recorded as “self-supported debt.”

That means utility users pay for all but $5 million of the $609.5 million required. The only relief could come from Ottawa or the Alberta government, and they aren’t exactly rolling out cash prizes.

Calgarians are urged to take short showers today.

Coming soon, city hall will give them a bath.

Don Braid’s columns appear regularly in the Herald

X and Bluesky: @DonBraid

© Calgary Herald