Water main breaks followed 'lack of planning and execution' by city, report suggests

Mishandled information and underspent infrastructure budgets among the key findings in a provincially ordered inspection of Calgary's water system released on Thursday. My central finding is that these failures expose weaknesses. Extending well beyond the pipe itself. Gouldy says inspections were delayed and known risks didn't lead to timely action. His report was ordered by Alberta's municipal affairs minister. The failure to deliver drinking water to a city of over a million people is a core municipal service and something a minister of municipal affairs in any jurisdiction would want to look into. The inspection found senior city officials withheld recommendations from council that were part of a 2015-2016 water system review. The report calls it a significant governance failure and missed opportunity to address weaknesses. They are very similar to many of the recommendations in the independent review panel and my inspection recommendations. So clearly it points out that those recommendations were material and significant. It also says then-mayor and now NDP leader Naheed Nenshi did receive the full report, but there's no evidence he knew about the omissions. This government put out a personal vendetta to try and find a smoking gun on me. And they use taxpayer money. The inspection also says for nearly two decades, the city underspent its approved capital budgets by about 35%, which the report says likely contributed to deterioration. To improve oversight, Goldie recommends transferring control of the water utility to a municipal corporation like Enmax. The province says if it decides to intervene based on the recommendations, those decisions are still months away. I'm going to review the report in its... whole form and fundamentally my interest is about making sure Calgarians get drinking water as the Minister of Municipal Affairs. In a statement, the city says the people who made decisions surrounding the 2015-2016 report are no longer at the city, adding it has significantly improved capital spending rates, made major changes to water oversight, like appointing a chief operating officer of water, and it has an ambitious plan to make generational investments in the water system by 2030. Brendan Coulter, CBC News, Calgary City Hall.