Calgary city councillors to receive independent review of 2024 feeder main break

Calgary city councillors are set to get their hands on an independent panel’s review into the 2024 rupture of the Bearspaw feeder main sometime Tuesday, but one councillor is already raising concerns.

In the months following the original break along the critical water line, which ruptured again last week in a different location, long-time executive and ATCO board member Siegfried W. Kiefer was tapped by an advisory committee to head up the five member independent review panel.

That panel was tasked with examining what led to the Bearspaw feeder main to burst, what preventative measures are needed, as well as a deeper look at “all aspects” of the city’s utility infrastructure including the water utility systems operations and maintenance, assurance and risk management, planning, design and engineering, budget and financing, and governance and organization responsibility.

According to Calgary’s mayor, the report will be delivered to city councillors on Tuesday night, and the panel will present the findings publicly at a city committee meeting on Jan. 13.

“We are working collectively to get this out to the public as soon as humanly possible,” Calgary mayor Jeromy Farkas said Monday. “We need to be as transparent as possible with Calgarians about, not just what’s happening with the pipe, but also the governance of the City of Calgary.”

However, Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston has been vocal in his concerns with the report, including a social media post questioning the panel’s independence.

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“People want answers on this, and the more they come out with half answers, the more questions we’re going to have,” he told Global News on Monday.

Johnston’s concerns centre around an email sent by Kiefer, the panel’s chair, to city councillors and the mayor on Saturday regarding the timing of the report’s release.

“Our Panel is fully committed to delivering to you – and to all Calgarians – a report that is accurate, complete,and reflective of the thousands of hours of work invested,” Kiefer said in the email obtained by Global News. “We require only a few additional days to finalize the work.”

Kiefer then noted the report will be handed over on Tuesday instead of Thursday, and offered his “confidential cell phone number” to councillors if they have any questions “regarding the timing of the release” of the report.

In a follow-up email from Kiefer replying to a concern from Johnston, also obtained by Global News, Kiefer said he would “refuse any conversation beyond” the timing of the report’s release.

“I and our entire panel have been, and remain, completely committed to maintaining the absolute independence of our review work and our report,” the email reads.

When asked about the situation Monday, Farkas defended the panel’s independence.

“The panel chair contacted members of council to make it very clear the request for more time to complete the report was coming from the panel itself and not from city administration,” Farkas said. “This was really essential to build trust in the overall process.”

City administration was provided a “very incomplete draft” of the report, Farkas said.  Kiefer’s email said this was to complete “due diligence on fact-checking and accuracy.”

In an interview with Global News, Johnston said he is concerned administration received information, despite it being for accuracy.

City of Calgary Infrastructure Services general manager Michael Thompson said administration was asked “to provide facts,” and that information was sent to the panel.

“We are not editing the report, it is not our report, it is an independent panel report,” Thompson said.

A City of Calgary report into the feeder main break released in Nov. 2024 showed several factors are believed to have contributed to the rupture of the pipe including microcracking of the protective plaster outer layer, wires breaking due to corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement, and high chloride levels in the soil surrounding the pipe.

Kerry Black, a civil engineering professor at the University of Calgary, said she doesn’t believe the independent panel’s report will show a “smoking gun.”

“It’s not one thing that contributes to infrastructure failure, it’s a series of events and things unfolding and multiple factors that are ultimately the result of a catastrophic failure like we saw a couple years ago,” she told Global News.

No matter what the report recommends, Farkas told reporters city officials will act on the panel’s “unvarnished” opinions.

“The good, the bad and the ugly,” Farkas said. “We will act on those recommendations so that Calgarians can have confidence in their water system.”

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