Calgary Herald- When will Calgary water pipe screwup ever end?
And so on Wednesday we brace ourselves for the latest bitter pill we’re being told to swallow. Cut water use indoors, clamp down on outdoor water use starting in the last week of August. At least 16 sites along the city’s crappy water pipe need repair. Construction is for about a month until late September.
I’m old enough to remember when people used to move to the cities because they wanted reliable sewer and water systems. Now you have to move back out into the country and look after them yourself.
I am really loving my cistern, septic system and big propane tanks right about now, let me tell you. Generator on standby.
I am an insomniac, I wake up very early. My garden gets watered very early here in Calgary and are nice and green. I haven’t observed the water restrictions at all. We might actually need a complete collapse before anything is actually done to solve the problem. It also might encourage the province to step in and remove the Mayor.
You’re not a hero.
Yes, I am. I am a hero to the plants that have had their lives spared from the incompetence of the leftist council and city administration. I am a climate hero for filtering the CO2 from the environment using my well maintained and watered plants. I am a hero for saving the planet. I am a hero for those that seek beauty and comfort from nature. Yes, I am a hero.
Whether or not the current council and city administration are incompetent does not matter a whit. The proper way to deal with that is at the election booth. Watering your lawn while the rest of us watched our yards go brown was simply selfish.
He’s the only guy with a green lawn on the whole street, Marmot. Why not drop by for a word, hm?
Or admit that your outrage is selective, and really water use restrictions are nothing but governments trying to seem like they’re Doing Something when they’re not. Same as Covid, but with even less excuse.
Maybe you should look into getting a water tank instead of trying to play block captain. Just a thought.
I doubt that the city government imposed water restrictions arbitrarily, if that’s what you’re suggesting. They did not earn Mayor Gondek any love. I’m sure many will vote against her simply for those restictions.
No, the restrictions were in place to ensure Calgarians had water for kitchens and bathrooms, which is why John was a selfish arsehole for watering his lawn using city water.
Here’s a video of the Japanese repairing a massive sinkhole in 7 days….
https://interestingengineering.com/videos/time-lapse-footage-shows-japans-fast-sinkhole-road-repair
“Who is being held accountable?”
Those who are truly responsible for this are retired or even dead. You MIGHT want to talk to current politicians and city managers about how regular inspections are carried out, but that’s the limit of it.
Exactly so. This episode is the result of decades of mismanagement and under-investment of city infrastructure.
Perhaps those who are truly responsible are not retired or dead. Perhaps City Council chose instead to ignore infrastructure so they could buy shiny baubles.
The Bears Paw water main was built in 1975 and was supposed to last 100 years. Instead it lasted 50 years before it burst. That’s the principle problem. Those responsible would have been in senior positions, and at a minimum would now be very old.
Perhaps better maintenance and inspection could have prevented outright failure, but it would not likely have prevented replacing sections of the pipe as they’re doing now.
Just because it is manufactured to last 100 years doesn’t mean “leave it and forget it”. It has to be maintained. That never happened because “spending priorities” of far-left idiots in the council chambers and city management.
How do you know it was never maintained? And how do you maintain wire cables encased in concrete buried in the ground?
Marmot bleats: “How do you know it was never maintained?”
Because it broke. Seriously, do you need this explained to you Mr. Science?
They rust, you know. That’s why you inspect. To find the rusty bits so you can dig them up and replace them -before- they break and f- everything up. You send a camera down there and look at it.
Sometimes they break anyway, but that is not what happened here. You don’t get 16 urgent repairs needed in the same pipe if you’ve been inspecting and repairing on a scheduled basis the way you’re supposed to. The way you get that is by taking the money for the maintenance schedule and spending it somewhere else. Like on driveway paving for all your friends, hockey tickets, strippers, stuff like that.
That’s why your f-ing lawn is going brown, city boi. Feel better now?
Phantom:
You might be right. On the other hand, you might not. I doubt you know the first thing about water pipelines. You might consider belaying the insults.
Inspecting stressed wire cables encased in concrete and buried in the ground seems to be no easy task. It appears to require that the pipeline be emptied, and once emptied, it takes weeks to get the pipeline fully functioning again.
KM
Pure Technologies is a Calgary based firm. It has technology for oil and for water pipelines. The technology does not require taking the line out of service to inspect. The City could have engaged them to analyze the mains. Obviously, the City didn’t or it wouldn’t have been surprised by the June incident.
https://youtu.be/sfoBAW2FwG8?si=YwjNkVdzE8yVJyQI
MikeT:
I am skeptical that Pure Technologies could have helped in this particular case. It was not a slow leak, but a sudden and cataclysmic failure of wire cables embedded in concrete.
Such as certain types of flags, different colours of paint for crosswalks and commissioning worthless ultra-overpriced garbage (called “art” by libtards).
This city, the Headquarters for many a Pipeline & Oil/Gas Companies … and not one soul in City Management had ever heard of bi-annual PIGGING of the water mains.
UTTER Stoopidity and Incompetence…
As for elections. I am convinced GONEDYKE was INSTALLED via the use of SOROS approved Voting Tabulators: DOMINION – a pce of 1996 Tech that is Beyond Easily hacked.
No way in hell was this BITCH “elected”
The ones who ordered it built are retired, its true. The ones charged with maintaining it are the ones working today. The thing itself worked fine for a long time. Regular inspections and timely maintenance of the dodgy bits are -now- problems. That’s just common sense. The guys who didn’t do the work are the ones to be called to account.
Just like arresting people for blocking the streets is a -now- problem. You can’t blame the retired police commissioner, he didn’t tell them to stand their with their hands in their pockets all day. The current commissioner did that.
There is no media glory in the maintenance of infrastructure, so it’s not a priority for politicians who need to get re-elected and need the media’s constant approval of brand new projects.
But it should be a priority for the unelected and unaccountable senior bureaucrats.
Those responsible are far-left politicians like Nenshi. Calgarians pay for the upkeep of basic infrastructure – part of which is for regular pipeline inspection and maintenance. But our homosexual communist mayor instead wasted money on things Calgarians opposed, like rainbow crosswalks, needles for junkies, the C-Train green line, buildings to house transvestite child groomers, etc.
The problem was well known during Nenshi’s term, but he ignored it. There was already a major line break over a decade before, and the pipeline was known to only be good for 50 years, despite Gondek’s later assertion that it should have lasted 100.
The city also knew that the line was losing over 20% of the water for over a decade and did nothing,
In a sane world, Nenshi, Gondek, and the related administration would be up on charges of criminal incompetence, but instead they’re still around dealing with THEIR priorities, like the supposed climate emergency…
And Nenshi took off his mask and grabbed the leadership of his party at the provincial level, the NDP. This after pretending for years, badly, to be a centrist.
Well there’s some rainbow crosswalks and at least a handful of children are confused about gender so there’s that.
A tax strike wouldn’t hurt anyone either.
Perhaps people will now do a little due diligence come election time. All these turds float up, it’s training camp for the provincials and feds.
I am pis sed when I see a picture of politicians and pencil pushers standing around in brand new hard hats and high visibility vests. They are so clean, have not come close to shovel or greese gun in this life time. Useless as tits on a bull, just like the vests that virtue signal safety. The wearer of this fantastic garment doesn’t have to watch where they are going anymore or where the money is spent.
I am pis sed when I see a picture of politicians and pencil publishers standing around in brand new hard hats and high visibility vests. They are so clean, have not come close to shovel or greese gun in this life time. Useless as tits on a bull, just like the vests that virtue signal safety. The wearer of this fantastic garment doesn’t have to watch where they are going anymore or where the money is spent.
Just read the article. This sounds like the Canadian equivalent of San Francisco government incompetence. This is the end result of Leftist policies. They ALWAYS end in failure … and misery.
Teton Pass in Wyoming was re-opened in 3 weeks. The landslide happened 3 days after Calgary’s watermain failure.
Opening a pass is easy, compared to getting something done by a city government.
We can probably find lots of examples of rapid clearing of problems, that was done by competent people with the right incentives. My example, would be the 2015 Gogama derailment, that occurred on March 7, 2015, by March 10th a temporary replacement bridge was built followed by permanent replacement bridge in place and operating by March 18th.
As soon as the mayoress stepped in the city hall, she declared that she is the fighter of the climate.
Pipes? Infrastructure? …. What pipes? What infrastructure? …..
Never mind, she is going to stop the climate. That’s where the money need to go.
End of story.
lol…
Perhaps the citizens of Calgary are responsible for they are the ones who voted in these clowns. There are those who voted and those (the majority) who couldn’t be bothered to understand the fundamental issues such as infrastructure/taxes and didn’t bother to vote. Those who did were infatuated by shiny baubles and saving the world from climate change or other useless promises made by politicians/hucksters. Maybe elections matter after all.
The same applies to other cities as well – Toronto being one example where a council and mayor, who were more focused on changing street names than the mundane issues of running a city, were elected.
You can vote your way into socialism, but maybe not out again. It doesn’t matter who votes, remember. It only matters who counts the votes.
With that said, I must agree that whatever happens to Toronto, they begged for it.
Prior to Nenshi the Hutt, Calgary wasn’t known for having “voting irregularities”.
I wouldn’t pass the blame to those who voted, but rather to those who counted the votes.
Just think. What is happening to our water and sewage infrastructure is also happening to our electric grid.
And don’t forget bridges.
When was the last time you heard a politician talk about maintaining existing infrastructure during an election campaign?
One would hope at this stage there is serious talk about adding redundancy along with a new pipe. The way cities bang on about future growth, to ignore future needs or failures is just incompetent.
Glenmore reservoir likely saved the day with the cross connect system and the city is in an enviable situation in having two unrelated water sources.
From another Herald article there was premature pipe failure ten years ago in the McKnight area. Concrete had been considered indestructible but it appears something in the soil was making it break down