So people in Ottawa's south end should have a sense of perspective on the whole issue of the outdoor watering ban because a long pipe from the city to the suburbs has malfunctioned. Yes, residents have paid for this service, but sometimes things go wrong. Any homeowner should know that.

The residents of the south end should show patience. The City of Ottawa, given the outcry over the water restrictions, is going as fast as it can to repair the problem. Still, there are lessons to be learned and warnings to be heeded from this sorry incident.

For example, the Woodroffe Avenue water pipe was one very long piece of infrastructure. It's an illustration of just how expensive -and occasionally precarious -stretching infrastructure to far-flung suburbs can be. The longer the infrastructure, the less redundancy in the system, the worse the potential for problems. It's an argument for intensification. Patching together an adequate backup system is much more difficult when you are stretching water lines across the entire width of the Experimental Farm rather than serving many people in a small area.

Still, we can't take back the south urban community and drop it north of Hunt Club Road, so long pipes with little backup are likely to be the norm unless the farm is moved to another community. That's highly unlikely. Perhaps those people on rural wells should choose to keep them next time they're given an option.

Meanwhile, a number of south-end residents have complained that there isn't a second four-foot-wide water main extending across the farm -but that was the purpose of the 16-inch pipe down Merivale Road. It acts as a backup to the main line. If that smaller pipe fails, then there is real trouble in the south end.

Nevertheless, there are real questions to be answered about this city snafu. Why was the pipe built so close to the surface it would corrode? Woodroffe Avenue has a history of unstable ground and water. Did that play a role in this mess? If the contractor who built the line made mistakes, can Ottawans get restitution? Was city staff responsible for the problems with the pipe and, if so, what price is there to be paid by those at fault? How do we prevent such problems in the future?

These questions need to be answered so we can move forward from this inconvenience for a large number of Ottawa homeowners.