The engineer has been, and is, a maker of history.
—James Kip Finch
At the height of its power, the ancient city of Rome boasted 800 kilometres of aqueducts delivering over 1 million cubic metres of fresh spring water per day from the surrounding hills to its urban outskirts. From there, it was transported through a vast system of pipes and channels, both above and below ground, to private homes, baths and public spaces. Across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, the Roman Empire’s provision of clean drinking water when and where it was needed is arguably its greatest and most lasting achievement. Indeed, many of these engineering marvels can still be seen today – from tunnels laboriously carved through mountains to graceful arched aqueducts spanning wide valleys.
The magnificence of this public infrastructure was not lost on contemporary minds. “There is nothing to be found more worthy of our admiration throughout the whole universe,” Roman poet Pliny the Elder wrote in AD 77, than “the abundant supply of water to the public, for baths, ponds, canals, household purposes, gardens, places in the suburbs, and country houses.”
Canadians in the 21st century could do with a bit of Pliny’s introspection regarding their own waterworks. While we may enjoy an array of plumbing advantages that surpass those of ancient Rome – hot water on demand and flush toilets among them – in some ways our entire system is inferior to theirs. Certainly, no one expects anything operating in Canada today to stand for another 2,000 years. In many cities, it’s an open question whether the faucets will still be working a week from now.
What has changed in the intervening 20 centuries? Quite a bit, obviously. But one of the biggest differences may be the attention paid to basic engineering necessities. In ancient times, public works were among a community’s most prized features. The military engineers responsible for building and maintaining the aqueducts, distribution facilities, bridges and roads were frequently celebrated as local heroes, including by memorialization in epigrams and on columns.
Today, city hall has little time for engineers or their concerns. Municipal glory is not to be found in mundane projects that pour and flush. Rather, most local politicians would rather distinguish themselves with sweeping declarations about national or international politics. Or by spending taxpayers’ money on lavish monuments to their own farsightedness – prodigiously expensive light rail transit being a popular weakness.
But choosing to ignore the fundamentals of municipal governance has very real consequences. With a deluge of catastrophic failures wreaking havoc on water systems across Canada, it is time to take stock of the real priorities of municipal government, and refocus relentlessly on them. Among the ways to get there: put engineers in charge. A good place to start would be the mayor’s chair.
Trouble Down Below
Canada operates an estimated 470,000 kilometres of underground water conveyances. These run from water sources via treatment facilities to household taps, from toilets to wastewater treatment facilities, and from storm gutters to catchment ponds, rivers and lakes. It is an immensely complicated system. Some lines are located just a few metres below the surface, while others can be 40 metres deep.
Our lives have been built atop this network of pipes, cisterns, pumps and valves, literally and figuratively. It represents the basic foundation for the many modern conveniences that today define our lives. During the post-Second World War boom, these systems were often installed with the expectation they’d never be seen again. But shallow piping is susceptible to chloride-related deterioration, both from salt and other chemicals applied to roads in winter as well as naturally occurring soil conditions. Pipes buried deeper may be less prone to corrosion, but when they do break the repair costs can be astronomical. And now, after decades of neglect, our postwar foundation is crumbling beneath us.
Sometimes, it’s not a rush of water that raises the alarm but a simple announcement. Late last year, the Region of Waterloo in southwestern Ontario stunned local residents and developers by declaring it was on the verge of running out of drinking water.
Visible evidence of this gathering crisis is recurringly supplied by torrents of water in all the wrong places. Such was the case on June 5, 2024 when Calgary’s Bearspaw South Feeder Main burst its concrete casing, turning what are usually city roads and parks into rivers and lakes. The two-metre-diameter pipe, installed in 1975, draws from the Bearspaw Water Treatment Facility on the Bow River and supplies up to 60 percent of the city’s drinking water. The catastrophic Calgary water main break prompted a city-wide state of emergency with strict water restrictions.
Given the immense public disruption of the Calgary water main break, the city dutifully commissioned a group of experts to conduct an independent review of the causes and potential solutions. But before the Bearspaw South Feedermain Independent Review Panel could even publish its report, the same water main ruptured again with a force that tore paved roads apart, stranding and nearly drowning a number of motorists. Similar disasters have occurred in recent years across the country. In August 2024 in Montreal, for example, a burst water main sent a geyser of water four storeys high. And last month, a burst water main in Vancouver flooded basements and parking garages on East Hastings Street.
Sometimes, it’s not a rush of water that raises the alarm but a simple announcement. Late last year, the Region of Waterloo in southwestern Ontario stunned local residents and developers by declaring it was on the verge of running out of drinking water. Because the area draws most of its water from wells, it is heavily dependent on the strength of local aquifers and a network of 100 pumping stations. But when staff updated water supply projections in December, they discovered the system had been operating at 97 percent capacity for several years – a dangerously high level with no room for error. And the area’s largest water treatment plant is in desperate need of repairs.
In response, the regional municipality issued a moratorium on all new residential, commercial and industrial projects across most of the region. No developments awaiting approval can be hooked up to the local water system until the problem is fixed, halting dozens of plans and blocking scores of potential new proposals. Local developers struggling to put up homes in the midst of a national housing crisis reacted with disbelief.
Joseph Puopolo, co-chief executive officer of local builder Polocorp Inc., told the Waterloo Region Record that the moratorium sends a message “that we’re not open for business…[which] will have huge impacts for years and years to come.” In its latest update, the Region of Waterloo says it hopes to have its capacity issues solved by 2032, at which point it should be ready “to meet future growth demands.” For at least the next six years, everyone will just have to sit tight.
And while it is not a Canadian example, a massive sewage spill in Washington, D.C. in January illustrates the threat at the other end of the water system. The catastrophic failure of a 60-year-old sewer pipe in the U.S. capital sent a tidal wave of untreated waste flowing directly into the Potomac River. Releasing an estimated 300 million gallons of raw sewage, the Potomac River sewage spill dwarfs many other, much-more notorious ecological disasters. The Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, for example, deposited a mere 11 million gallons of crude oil along the Alaskan coast, most of which simply evaporated; the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico – now the Gulf of America – involved 134 million gallons. Levels of E. coli bacteria in the Potomac River were measured at nearly 12,000 times the recommended safe level, while its downstream banks were festooned with a horror show of toilet paper, hygiene products and human waste.
Sifting the Evidence
There is no single, direct reason connecting these different infrastructure disasters. In Calgary, the proximate cause was aging prestressed concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP). Most of Canada’s postwar underground water infrastructure is constructed of PCCP, which utilizes a mesh of metal cabling surrounding a steel-lined, concrete core. Such reinforcing enables the use of thinner, wider – and cheaper – piping than would otherwise be possible. The cables are, however, under immense tension when buried. If they corrode, the result can be a dramatic “snap” that in turn shatters the pipe.
A catastrophic sewer line rupture in Washington, D.C. in January dumped 300 million gallons of human waste into the Potomac River and raised E.Coli levels to 12,000 times the recommended level. By comparison, the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez crude oil spill in Alaska disgorged a mere 11 million gallons. (Source of photo: AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
The engineering industry has long been aware that PCCP manufactured circa 1972-1984 is particularly prone to bursting due to use of thin wires that corrode faster than originally expected. Across North America, over 600 PCCP pipe failures from this era have already been identified. The Lake Huron and Elgin Area Primary Water Supply System in southwestern Ontario, for example, experienced four major ruptures of its PCCP transmission mains between 1983 and 2012. As a result, the region initiated a major capital project to build redundancy into the system by twinning three sections of the water main. In Calgary, problems with PCCP were first identified in 2004 following the rupture of the McKnight Feeder Main in the city’s northeast. Any city with PCCP dating from this problematic era should already be aware of the risks.
In Waterloo, the issue appears connected to a rapid increase in housing density, due to strict boundaries on suburban growth and the recent trend towards “infill” housing development. This concept, now common in large Canadian cities, generally involves replacing single-family dwellings with multi-family complexes or other bigger buildings. While there are good economic reasons to promote infill projects, building them en masse raises significant planning issues for underground infrastructure that was designed to serve communities of mainly single-family homes.
Individual homes are connected to a city’s main feeder lines by a series of high-pressure service pipes that create a mycelium-like system. Replacing a single house with multiple units on the same plot of land puts tremendous strain on the existing water system. Instead of two or three bathrooms, now there may be a dozen drawing upon the same service pipe, along with a similar increase in dishwashers, washing machines, etc. Waterloo Region planners may have failed to anticipate this foreseeable intensity effect.
As for the Potomac River disaster, beyond the obvious issue of age, the sewer collapse’s immediate cause remains a mystery. The incident has, however, touched off rampant finger-pointing among the federal government, District of Columbia and state of Maryland – with each level of government claiming the calamity to be the others’ fault. All of which suggests a lack of clear responsibility. DC Water, which owns and operates the pipe, called the rupture “a once in a lifetime type break”. We can only hope.
Statistics Canada’s Core Public Infrastructure Survey calculated that as of 2022, it would take $113 billion to bring all of Canada’s drinking, waste and storm water systems up to a ‘good’ level of repair.
While the underlying causes for Canada’s infrastructure failures may be varied – from disco-era concrete piping to a lack of planning foresight to managerial incoherence – one overarching link connects them all: no-one was paying proper attention.
Why are Canadian municipal water systems facing a crisis of catastrophic underground failures?
The crisis stems from decades of systemic neglect and misallocation of funds by municipal governments. Also, many cities rely on prestressed concrete-cylinder pipes manufactured between 1972 and 1984, which are particularly prone to sudden failure. A survey by Statistics Canada in 2022 found that while $113 billion would be required to bring the nation’s water systems up to a “good” state of repair, governments spent only $10 billion on maintenance that year.
Ignorance of Infrastructure
Statistics on the state of Canada’s water infrastructure make for grim reading. The most recent version of the Canadian Infrastructure Report Card (CIRC) was released in 2019 and revealed that 30 percent of Canada’s water systems – drinking water, wastewater and storm water – were in fair to poor condition. The report identified over 50,000 kilometres of underground infrastructure and over 1,800 water and wastewater treatment facilities that were either “approaching the end of [their] service life” or “unfit for sustained service.” The CIRC was prepared by organizations with direct expertise in the field, including the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering and the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies Canada.
More recently, Statistics Canada’s Core Public Infrastructure Survey calculated that as of 2022, it would take $113 billion to bring all of Canada’s water systems up to a “good” level of repair. Canadian governments spent just $10 billion in 2022 on infrastructure maintenance, or less than 10 percent of the required sum. Ongoing reinvestment is nowhere near what’s needed to keep Canadian water systems in working order.
The Bearspaw investigation’s report, submitted to newly elected mayor Jeromy Farkas on January 6, 2026, offers a timely case study, including causes and consequences. The expert panel was chaired by Siegfried Kiefer, former president and CEO of Canadian Utilities Ltd, and included five other subject matter experts with substantial executive experience in the energy and utilities sectors. They were unstinting in their criticism of the situation in Calgary:
“Despite repeated identification of this risk, the City prioritized other critical needs and initiatives, repeatedly deferring Bearspaw South Feeder Main (BPSFM) inspection, monitoring, and risk mitigation. This deferral was a function of the underestimated likelihood of failure, not appreciating the significant impact of a failure, emphasis on other priorities and occasional periods of operating budget constraints. This pattern, which persisted over two decades, across multiple leadership teams and organizational structures, reflects systemic gaps in the Water Utility’s approach to managing critical infrastructure.” [Emphasis added]
In response to a C2C Journal request, the city provided a breakdown of the dividends paid by the Calgary water utility. This year – two years after the first Bearspaw disaster – the water utility will pay the city its largest-ever dividend: $130 million.
Since a similar water main failure in 2004 along McKnight Boulevard in the city’s northeast, it should have been apparent to anyone paying attention that the concrete pipes beneath Calgary were slowly crumbling. Yet those in charge paid little mind. They were busy with “other priorities.”
It gets worse. Despite an obvious need for capital repairs and replacement, the expert panel revealed that the city’s water system was actually paying for those other priorities at city hall via a “dividend” delivered to civic coffers.
In response to a C2C Journal request, the city provided a breakdown of the dividends paid by the Calgary water utility, whose revenue comes overwhelmingly from residential, commercial and institutional ratepayers, as the figures cannot be gleaned directly from annual budget documents. The payments are instead combined with dividends from the city’s electrical utility and parking authority in a revenue line-item incorrectly labelled “return on equity”.
The breakdown reveals that this year – two years after the first Bearspaw disaster – the water utility will pay the city its largest-ever dividend: $130 million. As can be seen from the accompanying chart, over the past 10 years more than $1 billion has been removed from Calgary’s water utility via dividends and placed into general revenues to be allocated to other things. [Editor’s note: For more detail on Calgary’s water dividend, see this National Post article by Greg Wilson and C2C Journal editor Peter Shawn Taylor.]
Over the past decade, Calgary’s water utility has paid more than $1 billion in dividends to the city’s general revenue fund – a financial manoeuvre the Bearspaw independent panel found to be “inconsistent with best practice.” (Source of graphic: C2C Journal)The combination of apparent budgetary concealment and obvious neglect of a utility in crisis seems shocking on the face of it – yet the situation is not unique to Calgary. In Winnipeg the city also takes a percentage of revenues from its water utility and places it in general revenue. Last year, that amounted to $40 million.
Additionally, the Bearspaw expert panel observed that the utility wasn’t even spending its entire capital allotment meant to keep the water system in good repair. According to the final report, “Only twice…[between 2004 and 2024] did the Water Utility spend its budgeted capital, chronically underinvesting and deferring important projects that could have improved the resilience of the system to outages.”
The full story behind the Bearspaw collapse is one of continual indifference to necessary maintenance and repair. In effect, the water system was being treated as a slush fund to subsidize other aspects of the city’s budget. What explains such a state of affairs? The expert panel points a finger at politics. “Water Utility assets have life spans of 40 to 50 years or longer,” the report states. “These planning horizons far exceed timelines of most municipal decisions and extend well beyond the 4-year cycle for elections of Council.” With infrastructure maintenance and repair an expensive and unglamourous undertaking, politicians may see no benefit to championing the local water system or keeping it shipshape.
How do incidents like the Calgary water main break and the Potomac River sewage spill illustrate a deeper crisis in municipal management?
These disasters reveal that municipal governments have chronically underinvested in essential infrastructure while treating utilities as financial slush funds. The 2024 Calgary water main break of the Bearspaw South Feeder Main occurred after two decades of deferred inspections, despite the city removing over $1 billion from its water utility over the past decade to fund other programs. The catastrophic failure of a 60-year-old pipe in Washington, D.C. in January 2026 spilled 300 million gallons of human waste into the Potomac River. The Potomac River sewage spill dwarfed other ecological disasters, such as the 1989 Exxon Valdez crude oil spill in Alaska. As the political focus of municipal governments has drifted toward social engineering and grandstanding, the literal foundations of our cities are crumbling.
I’ve Got Better Things to Do
Most Canadians live in municipalities run by elected councillors who, for the most part, have no idea about the actual state of their local infrastructure. Or simply don’t care. City councils and mayors tend to be generalists who see the world through their own personal ideological lenses. This leads many to prefer grandstanding political statements about national or international events or splashy legacy projects over the dreary, routine business of taking good care of local infrastructure.
In Calgary, for example, former mayor Jyoti Gondek, who was in charge during the first Bearspaw disaster and was defeated in her bid for re-election just weeks before the second, was well-known for her support of many high-profile progressive causes. Among them, a declaration of a local “climate emergency” and a short-lived and deeply unpopular plastic bag fee; in 2021 she even waded into Quebec politics with a quixotic campaign to stop that province’s Bill 21.
Virtue-signalling comes first: Many Canadian municipal politicians prefer progressive causes over the unglamorous job of infrastructure upkeep. In Calgary, recently unseated mayor Jyoti Gondek (left) declared a “climate emergency” in 2021 and later waded into Quebec’s Bill 21 debate – only to have the Bearspaw disaster occur on her watch. (Source of photo: The Canadian Press/Gavin Young)
The fascination at city hall with causes far beyond local significance is certainly not unique to Calgary. For example, numerous cities (including Calgary, until it recently changed its policy) have raised the Palestinian flag at city hall to make a nakedly political point – in a jurisdiction far from their core responsibilities. The same applies to the municipal fixation with renaming streets, buildings or bridges with unpronounceable Indigenous names. Or clogging up busy streets with little-used bike lanes.
Every such political crusade takes municipal stewards farther away from their fundamental duty to deliver basic services such as water, sewage, garbage and policing to local residents. Among the sharpest critics of this trend is Alberta-based lawyer Eva Chipiuk, well-known for her work with the Freedom Convoy. Following the most recent Bearspaw break, she observed that, “This is what happens when city council is more focused on flags than essential services.” In a post following the earlier Bearspaw collapse, Chipiuk similarly noted that, “For years, Canadian municipalities have gone out of their way to delve into areas outside of their scope and understanding, to the detriment of citizens. It’s time this stops, and we get competent managers managing essential public services for their citizens.” That sounds like a great idea. But how do we get there?
According to the Bearspaw expert panel, the best approach for Calgary’s water utility would be to remove day-to-day control from city bureaucrats and detailed oversight from city council. The report recommends turning the city’s entire water supply system over to a stand-alone, city-owned corporation to be run by an independent board of directors. This would prevent the utility from being used as a piggybank by city council, ensure someone could be held responsible for future failures, and lengthen the time horizon of those in charge beyond a four-year election cycle. Shifting the management and ownership of local water operations in this way seems a logical and sensible solution, and one that has been adopted by other cities and utilities. Calgary’s electrical system, for example, is already run by ENMAX, a city-owned but independently operated and managed corporation. Farkas recently suggested ENMAX could take over the city’s water system as well.
There is, however, another way to ensure that Canada’s critical infrastructure is treated with the respect and concern it deserves: fill city hall with elected officials who truly appreciate the importance of keeping local infrastructure in good repair. And who better to focus on engineering necessities than engineers themselves?
Engineers to the Rescue
“Decision makers are not compelled by the unseen,” says former Edmonton city councillor Tim Cartmell. A structural engineer and owner of his own consulting firm, Cartmell is a rare P. Eng to have held public office. During his two terms on city council from 2017 to 2025, Cartmell says he frequently found himself frustrated by his fellow councillors’ lack of interest in what lies beneath their city’s streets.
More so than the long line of lawyers, teachers and union leaders who typically fill the seats at city hall, engineers are equipped with a deep knowledge about how these civic infrastructure systems work over their lifecycle.
Elected municipal officials, Cartmell explains in an interview, tend to be far more interested in things that run on top of local roads rather than below them. “When you have a mayor obsessed with trains,” he says, referring to former Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi’s light rail transit ambitions, “you end up with a debt load that reflects that.” Cartmell calculates that 45 percent of the city’s current $5 billion accumulated debt is due to Sohi’s hugely-expensive light rail transit system.
Pointing to the 2019 CIRC report and more recent warnings regarding the decrepit state of Canada’s underground infrastructure, Cartmell notes that regular maintenance and repair often get overlooked because they aren’t sufficiently exciting for local politicians. In civic budget battles, he recollects, the city’s “actual priorities” would often lose out to higher-profile “ideological spending.” The solution, Cartmell says, is to improve the technical understanding of those in charge. “We need more subject matter experts” with the power to make decisions, he says. “We need more engineers on council and within city hall.”
It seems significant that the CIRC report Cartmell refers to was led by a collection of engineering associations and groups. Engineers are trained to assess complex problems and create functional solutions. More so than the long line of lawyers, teachers and union leaders who typically fill the seats at city hall, engineers are equipped with a deep knowledge about how these systems work over their lifecycle.
They also have the critical thinking skills required to understand that when one lever is moved, it has effects elsewhere. You cannot simply squeeze more houses into a given area without assessing the capacity and reliability of all the necessary inputs, as the Region of Waterloo has discovered to its regret. Finally, engineers appreciate that building redundant capacity is not a waste of money, even if it duplicates an existing service. When a crisis hits, redundancy can be the difference between a near-miss and absolute disaster.
Unfortunately for Cartmell, engineering prudence has not proven a political winner so far. In 2025 he ran for mayor of Edmonton on a platform that touted his engineering background and greatly emphasized repairing and maintaining the city’s unseen infrastructure. He finished second, with 30 percent of the vote. “When people see the consequences of their votes, maybe then they will understand,” he says, a hint of irritation in his voice. “We are electing people who are allowing things to get worse.”
It’s not just elected officials who need to grasp the basics of engineering. Voters have to do the same.
Is the February 2026 Vancouver water main break an isolated incident, or is it part of a broader national trend?
The Vancouver water main break of February 2026 is part of a deluge of catastrophic failures wreaking havoc on water systems across Canada. Other examples are breaks in Calgary (June 2024 and December 2026) and Montreal (August 2024). Statistics Canada’s 2022 public infrastructure survey calculated it would take $113 billion to bring all of Canada’s potable, waste and storm water systems up to a “good” level of repair. But all levels of government combined spent less than 10 percent of that amount in 2022 on maintenance.
Regina’s Underground Champion
Despite Cartmell’s fate, it is not impossible for an engineer to become mayor. In 2024 mechanical engineer Chad Bachynski took the mayor’s chair in Regina as a political newcomer with a decidedly frugal outlook; his $12,000 in campaign expenses was a small fraction of incumbent Sandra Masters’ spending on her losing effort. Defying conventional political wisdom, Bachynski’s campaign leaned hard on infrastructure, including a promise for round-the-clock construction to speed up key projects, such as water mains and highway overpasses.
In an interview, Bachynski explains that his focus on critical systems is balanced by an awareness of other political necessities. “You need rinks,” he admits. “But not to the detriment of running water. You should expect to turn on your tap and get clean water.” He cites his pre-political experience as an engineer working with underground systems for making him hyper-aware of the need for redundant capacity, even if it seems like wasted money. And he often finds himself translating technical requirements into plain language for others on council. It is important, he says, for “councillors [to] feel confident and comfortable in their decisions.” Beyond keeping his fellow elected officials informed, Bachynski considers it his job to educate the electorate on the need to spend money on projects they’ll never see.
When a city study found that the local wastewater collection system had become a pinch point, Bachynski launched what he calls a “tactical and non-political plan” to explain to local voters how the need for a new wastewater lift (or pumping) station – which could cost up to $60 million – was connected to the rash of flooded basements that plague the city annually. Building public support is a crucial part of the task, he says.
On the touchy subject of development fees, he explains that builders in Regina are expected to cover their share of infrastructure expansion for new builds, but that the city pays to upsize those pipes to ensure redundant capacity is embedded from the get-go. And he points out that Regina’s water treatment and wastewater plants are already run by two separate, arm’s-length corporations, as Calgary’s Bearspaw report recommends. “I respect the limits of my lane, and lean on experts when necessary,” Bachynski adds. He may be an engineer by training, but he’s a politician by profession. Both skills seem vital.
A Shining City Hall on a Hill
Canada’s infrastructure problems are large, complex and expensive. Making matters worse, the chain of responsibility for keeping these systems in good repair is often murky. Lacking the technical skills to properly understand the issues at stake, most city councils defer to staff on issues of crucial importance. Or perhaps they simply don’t care about the routine aspects of their job, preferring to distinguish themselves in other ways. They may even treat critical public utilities as a convenient source of funds to pay for other, more politically-attractive indulgences. But out-of-sight, out-of-mind is no way to run a city.
There are several ways to improve how municipal governments manage their core services. The Bearspaw expert panel provides four options, with arm’s-length corporate control being the preferred one. This has the advantage of ensuring that technical experts are in charge at all times – and that any dividends paid to the city reflect actual distributable profits and not politically-motivated skimming. It also ensures the system cannot be held hostage to ideological flights of fancy at city hall.
It is ultimately up to the voting public to recognize and reward municipal leaders who put the long-term interests of their community ahead of grandstanding and politicking.
There is, however, another possible solution: for ratepayers and voters to demand better from city hall. And one way to do that is by incorporating an engineer’s skillset into the job description for mayor and city councillor.
Not every engineer is suited for the mayor’s chair. I certainly have no desire to run for public office. But the occupation involves several key talents necessary to the task. While other professions and trades may demand similar critical-thinking skills – doctors, economists and mechanics come to mind – they lack the relevant technical knowledge.
The most important requirement, however, is that individuals elected to represent the public interest must focus themselves on a small number of immensely important tasks and drop all the other unnecessary affectations. As the Bearspaw expert panel observes, “[The city] is the sole provider of an essential service that is core to public health, meaning it must maintain continuous, stable, reliable operations, with little margin for error and a strong emphasis on accountability and a low risk tolerance.”
The final element to fixing Canada’s infrastructure crisis lies not at city hall, but at the ballot box. It is ultimately up to the voting public to recognize and reward municipal leaders who put the long-term interests of their community ahead of grandstanding and politicking. To this end, the electorate needs to recognize that keeping their showers flowing and their toilets flushing requires that a substantial portion of their local taxes be spent on things they will never see. Splash parks and hockey rinks may be great amenities to have, but they are all useless without the smooth operation of a vast underground network of pipes and valves below them. We are nothing without the water beneath our feet.
Greg Wilson is a professional engineer, writer and commentator obsessed with how we build, break and belong to the world around us. His musings can be found @Libertastalks on YouTube and @Libertaswrites on X and Substack.
Source of main image: AI/Shutterstock.
