SINGH – When the taps ran dry in Kamloops

Council often gets criticized for problems that largely belong to other orders of government — the housing and homelessness crisis, for example.

But providing clean, reliable water is about as core a municipal responsibility as it gets. I can’t recall another time when so much of our community went without water in their taps for so long.

Here’s a quick recap. On May 10, crews found a water leak on River Street, directly in front of the City’s main water treatment plant. A valve failure delayed efforts to isolate and locate the source. When the break was finally found, it was deep underground — in a pipe supplying water to every neighbourhood from Valleyview to Campbell Creek.

Reservoir levels in the affected area fell dangerously low. The City scrambled to set up bottled water stations, and Kamloops Fire Rescue activated contingency plans to maintain firefighting capacity. The situation wasn’t fully resolved until May 21 — 11 days later.

Throughout the crisis, the City pushed updates through the Voyent alert service, social media, and its website. The messaging escalated over time, from early water conservation requests to eventually telling residents not to use tap water at all.

To be fair, Kamloops operates one of the most complex water systems in the country. Across Canada, local governments have been sounding the alarm about aging infrastructure and pressing senior governments for funding help. Large-scale water main breaks are, unfortunately, becoming more common. This one may well have been unavoidable.

That said, it’s entirely reasonable to ask: why did this take so long to fix — and what has the City learned?

At the June 23 council meeting, senior staff presented their internal review. To their credit, they didn’t just defend themselves — they acknowledged real shortcomings.

Communications Director Kristen Rodrigue put it plainly: the City failed to match its messaging to the scale of what residents were actually experiencing. “We recognise that we deal with water main breaks all the time,” she said, “but we weren’t rising to the level of concern and the level of impact that the community was feeling — and that disconnect left people feeling frustrated and seeking answers.”

Civic operations director Jen Fretz acknowledged a “significant error” — an incorrect part that delayed the repair. I appreciated the candour, and I was left wanting more. Who was responsible for that part being there in the first place? What’s been changed to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

City administrator Byron McCorkell thanked residents for their patience and community spirit — and that gratitude is warranted. Kamloopsians, once again, showed up for each other.

But goodwill has limits. Residents also need to feel confident that the City is doing everything in its power to protect the critical services we all depend on. That confidence has to be earned — not just in a crisis, but in the work done before the next one hits.

Arjun Singh is a former Kamloops City councillor and is currently the executive director of the Kamloops Local News Society, which publishes the Kamloops Chronicle. This column also appears in the July edition of the Chronicle. He can be contacted at info@kamloopschronicle.com.