Call for Enmax-style water company gets mixed reviews from Calgary council
CBC
Some Calgary city councillors are throwing cold water on the idea that an Enmax-like corporation, owned by the city, should oversee its water system in the future.
An independent panel made the recommendation to council on Wednesday as part of a review of the catastrophic break of Calgary's Bearspaw feeder main in 2024, which led to months of water restrictions.
The report arrived just one week after the pipe suffered a second catastrophic rupture, and as the city said the pipe is highly vulnerable to more failures.
Along with an accelerated timeline to build a new pipe, the panel recommended that Calgary consolidate oversight of its water system into one dedicated department, overseen by a chief operating officer.
The panel also reported that department should, in a few years, become a municipally controlled corporation, similar to Edmonton's utility company EPCOR or Calgary's electrical provider, Enmax.
The panel argued Calgary's system has suffered from a lack of clear accountability, leading to repeatedly delayed inspections and maintenance. It suggested a new corporation would be a separate legal entity, wholly owned by the city, and governed by an independent board of experts.
Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to begin work on implementing the panel's recommendations. And Mayor Jeromy Farkas said on Wednesday to spare no expense to enact all the recommendations, and not to "cherry-pick" among them.
But longtime Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot criticized the idea of a future standalone corporation overseeing water.
“You create a wholly-owned subsidiary, and I guarantee you’re going to have those kind of heavy costs with administration,” Chabot said on The Calgary Eyeopener on Friday.
“To go to the level of creating a wholly owned subsidiary, because of six kilometres out of how many thousands of kilometres of pipe do we have? Yes this is a critical one, absolutely. But I don’t know, I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Chabot, who has been on council since 2004, instead suggested a single water department within the city, with its own general manager.
That would save Calgary money while still providing better oversight, if backed up with an external body offering a second opinion to administration.
Ward 2 Coun. Jennifer Wyness said the city is getting ahead of itself by talking about high-level oversight and restructuring, at a time when it needs to focus on accelerating work to repair and twin the Bearspaw main.
She said she's concerned what an Enmax-like approach to water could cost residents, and that Calgarians will likely ask questions about what a new utility corporation would mean for their monthly water bills.
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