Why Your Next Mayor Should Be an Engineer

By Greg Wilson

Beneath our feet lies an unseen network of water pipes and valves that we depend on every day. Without this vast underground liquid highway our taps would run dry and our toilets wouldn’t flush – society as we know it would soon screech to a halt.

This is no idle threat. In June 2024, Calgary’s Bearspaw South Feeder Main that supplies up to 60 percent of the city’s drinking water ruptured catastrophically – turning roads into rivers and parks into lakes. An immediate city-wide emergency followed, along with months of severe water restrictions. Then, less than two years later, the same pipe broke again.

There have been more than 600 failures of below-grade piping across North America in recent decades. Two months ago, a massive sewer pipe burst in Washington, D.C., pouring 300 million gallons of untreated human waste into the Potomac River, raising E. Coli levels to 12,000 times the recommended limit.

In 2019, the Canadian Infrastructure Report Card (CIRC) identified over 50,000 km of below-grade water piping and over 1,800 water and wastewater treatment facilities – approximately 30 percent of the country’s entire water system – that were either “approaching the end of [their] service life” or “unfit for sustained service”.

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 potable, wastewater and storm water systems up to a uniform “good” level of repair. That year Canadian governments at all levels spent just $10 billion on infrastructure maintenance and repair, or less than 10 percent of the requirement.

The problems facing Canada’s water systems are twofold. First is age: much of Canada’s postwar infrastructure is now reaching the end of its expected lifespan. Second is inattention: Canada’s underground networks aren’t particularly interesting to most municipal politicians.

Elected officials generally consider building above-ground projects such as bike lanes, recreation centres, and rapid transit to be far more exciting than pipes no one will ever see. And they love the ribbon-cutting opportunities. The same goes for showboating political stunts like raising flags and making declarations about national or international politics. All these efforts distract local governments from their core responsibilities.

In Calgary, an expert panel report into the Bearspaw disaster found the maintenance and repair of the underground concrete pipes had been repeatedly deferred, overlooked and underfunded. While a much earlier 2004 rupture should have served as a wake-up call, the city chose to continue deferring. The Bearspaw report further identified dividends paid by the city-owned water utility into general revenues as a contributing reason for the lack of timely repairs.

A subsequent C2C Journal investigation discovered that over the past 10 years, more than $1 billion in water user fees have been removed from Calgary’s water utility to be spent on other things. In 2026, two years after the first Bearspaw break, the dividend hit an all time high of $130 million. It should be noted that this figure is not readily discernible from Calgary’s city budget. C2C Journal had to ask specifically for a water dividend breakdown.

The Bearspaw expert panel recommended that management of the water system be removed from city hall and placed in the hands of an arm’s length, city-owned corporation. This is to ensure experts are in charge and to prevent the city from skimming off user fees into general revenue.

Corporatization is a reasonable solution, but there’s another way to fix the problem. Ensure city hall contains elected officials who actually understand and care about their city’s underground infrastructure. And who better to solve an engineering problem than engineers themselves?

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. And while other professions and trades require important critical thinking skills, engineers also come with the detailed technical knowledge necessary to assess the condition of underground systems.

In 2024, the City of Regina elected political newcomer (and mechanical engineer) Chad Bachynski as mayor. Bachynski was elected on a platform that emphasized the importance of infrastructure. “You need rinks,” he said in an interview. “But not to the detriment of running water. You should expect to turn on your tap and get clean water.”

His background in below-grade infrastructure has had a direct influence on his work at city hall. Bachynski said he often finds himself translating technical requirements into plain language for others on the council, as well as educating the electorate on the need to spend money on projects they’ll never see.

Beyond greater representation by engineers, fixing Canada’s infrastructure problem requires that voters recognize and reward municipal leaders who put the long-term interests of their community ahead of grandstanding and politicking. In order to keep faucets running and toilets flushing, it is necessary that a substantial portion of user fees and local taxes be spent on the water system. We need politicians who can admit this fact.

Among the greatest accomplishments of ancient Rome was its comprehensive system of aqueducts that could deliver clean drinking water wherever needed. Many of these structures are still standing today, more than 2,000 years later. When we look at our current municipal infrastructure, what do we see? In many cities it is an open question whether the taps will still be working a week from now. That needs to change.

Greg Wilson is a professional engineer, writer and commentator. His musings can be found @Libertastalks on YouTube and @Libertaswrites on X and Substack. The longer, original version of this story appeared at C2C Journal.