Good morning. Calgary’s water-main disaster drags on – we’ve got more on that below, along with Geoffrey Hinton’s AI warning and Trump’s appeal to the younger set.
Today’s headlines
- Fight brewing as construction looms for natural-gas pipeline in northern B.C.
- House of Commons expected to pass bill creating foreign-interference registry on Thursday, civil-liberties groups raise alarm
- G7 leaders reach deal to use Russian assets for Ukraine
- Biden will urge G7 leaders to push Hamas to back ceasefire deal backed by Israel
The big dig to repair Calgary's busted pipe.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
REDUCE, REUSE
How Calgarians are coping with their water crisis
Last Thursday, the main artery of Calgary’s water supply sprung a pretty serious leak, flooding roads and parks in the city’s northwest and prompting water restrictions for more than 1.2 million people. My colleague Carrie Tait wrote about how her fellow Calgarians were holding up: with no more than three-minute showers, not a lot of laundry and some creative handwashing. (The kids she spoke to were not at all fussed.) I checked back in with Carrie to see what happens now.
What went wrong with the water main – and why did it hurt the city so much?
Calgary has maybe 200 water-main breaks a year, and they’re isolated, so 20 homes might not have water for a bit. This particular pipe, which is the Bearspaw South Feedermain, serves 60 per cent of the homes in Calgary. It’s so big you could drive a truck through it. It’s also an old piece of infrastructure, and now there’s a hole in it and we don’t know how it got there. They are sending little robots down, while they have the pipe dug up, to try to gather data.
It sounds like repair work might be done by the end of the week, but when will the water actually be back?
After they finish repairing and welding the chunks of pipe they removed, it will take a couple days to flush out the sediment. Then it’ll take another two days to test the water, and another two to fill the reservoirs that are under the city. So we’re into next week before things return to normal.
Oof. What will that mean for everyone there?
People have been skipping laundry, skipping showers, not flushing the toilet, and now they’re getting a little more creative – they’re using their pasta water to water their plants. Premier Danielle Smith is holding a press conference today, and normally it’s kind of rude to show up with dirty hair, but I haven’t decided if I’m going to wash mine yet. I will say Calgary got a bit lucky on the timing: It’s not super hot right now, and it’s not during Stampede.
When I first heard about the restrictions, I figured they were climate-related, since both rivers in Calgary hit record-low levels last year.
After a rough start, Calgary has had a decent amount of precipitation recently, and it doesn’t look as though things will be as bad as last year. So we thought we escaped the drought, but then the infrastructure broke.
Alberta – like every corner of Canada – is getting hotter and drier. Is the province doing anything to shore up its water supply?
Water is something that provincial politicians are keenly aware of, because so much of Alberta’s industry is dependent on it, whether it’s agriculture or oil and gas. The government does have a desire to expand reservoirs to capture more water, both in runoff from the mountains and in rain, in order to boost industrial activity and provide a secure supply for growing communities. But that isn’t going to help Calgary’s crumbling infrastructure.
Read more: Globe readers in Calgary sent in their water-saving tricks. Residents have dropped their water use by 30 per cent. And Tanya Talaga points out that Calgarians’ water woes are giving them a taste of rez life.
The Shot
‘What I care about is people, and I’d rather the people were in charge.’
Man, not machine.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
AI maven Geoffrey Hinton thinks that training the bots (which are quick studies) using the internet (which is a garbage fire) might not have been our best idea. Read more from his conversation with Ian Brown here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
Abroad: Young Americans are feeling broke, burned out and weary of Biden – so more of them are flirting with the idea of voting for Trump.
At home: The Oilers head into Game 3 tonight in Edmonton, where they’ll need to get past the goalie who’s single-handedly winning Florida the Stanley Cup finals.
Too darn hot (part 1): The Meteorological Service of Canada has checked the weather models and confirmed: It’s going to be warmer than the average summer.
Too darn hot (part 2): Three wildly spicy brands of instant noodles have been pulled from stores in Denmark, after proving a health hazard to children and seniors.