As Calgarians brace for another extended period of water restrictions, they must begin thinking about what the priorities of the city should be. It’s rather embarrassing to live in one of the wealthiest cities in the world only to be scolded daily by the mayor for having flushed your toilet too many times. Water is a basic need and it’s outrageous that a city the size of Calgary with such a ready supply can’t manage to reliably get service to its citizens.Calgary’s inadequate water supply infrastructure is the result of generations of mayors and city councils pursuing personal vanity projects while neglecting what’s important. People don’t get as excited with a ribbon cutting for a new water pipeline, as they do with a shiny new library or hockey rink. Perhaps if names were attached to the less-romantic city infrastructure projects, the elected officials would be more inclined to pay attention to them.How about the Naheed Nenshi Septic Treatment Plant or the Jyoti Gondek Landfill? Nah. They want to see new parks, bike lanes, art centres, Olympic bids and community gardens.Calgary’s water distribution system is falling apart. It stands to reason that aging effluent pipes and other older infrastructure buried underground is ready to fail.Think a burst water pipe is bad? Imagine a geyser of sewage from a main disposal line erupting in a residential neighbourhood. It’s well within the realm of possibility.Testing the city pipeline systems will be expensive but it’s the only way to discover where the next failures will come from. Replacing the pipes will be incredibly expensive but there's little choice in the matter. The question then becomes where will the money come from? Calgary’s disastrous Green Line is eating up billions of dollars and surely will consume billions more if it continues. The price of the project continues to rise while the scope of the project continues to shrink. If the line's latest version ever gets built, it will now only reach from Calgary’s downtown to the community of Lynnwood. For those unfamiliar with Calgary, it means the line will travel through some zones of light-industrial neighbourhoods and terminate in a small community. There will be very little demand for transit on that route.The billions being spent on the Green Line should be diverted to testing and replacing critical city water and septic infrastructure. The city has already poured $1.5 billion into the Green Line without laying an inch of track. Taxpayers will be lucky if they get the planned little stub of it finished for less than $10 billion. Just pull the pin on the thing. There is no use tossing good money after bad when a person can’t even take an extended shower in their own home.The Green Line debacle is just the largest of the city's terrible road and rail infrastructure initiatives.Calgary’s city administration has been dominated by ideological anti-automobile types for years. The city has been wasting countless dollars ripping up sidewalks in developed communities to create more “walkable” zones. In doing so, they remove available parking and driving lanes from roads. Rather than creating more desirable communities, these efforts have caused traffic mayhem and crushed local businesses. The once-popular district of Marda Loop has been under construction for years and businesses are nearing bankruptcy while citizens avoid the area.The city of Calgary needs a serious reset in values. They must stop going out of their jurisdiction on pet projects for politicians and get back to focusing on core services. Gondek’s gang funded an activist group $100k per month to act as washroom attendants for two city bathrooms. The group didn’t even manage to make it to the end of their six month contract before running out of money. While that sounds like small potatoes, it is but one of dozens and dozens of goofy city initiatives and those costs add up. People are stretched thin. Housing costs, energy costs, food costs and ever-increasing taxes are challenging everybody. Citizens can’t afford tax increases to pay to fix the water lines in Calgary. The good news is the water lines can be replaced and repaired without raising taxes. The city will need to dump the Green Line and some other wasteful projects though.Citizens of Calgary need to ask themselves what's more important. The ability to flush the toilets in their homes at their own convenience or building a train line to nowhere?They then need to communicate the answer to the city through the ballot box. The current mayor and city administration won’t be changing a thing until they are kicked from their roles.
