The Editor,
There has been a lot of publicity recently with people shaming those who have green lawns or clean cars. I don’t disagree with this, but I also think a bit of shaming should be going on in our council chambers and our building permit offices.
Oversize homes are being approved at an unprecedented rate in our established neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods now have three to four times as many bathrooms as they used to.
They also have three to four times more square footage of impervious ground layer by way of 45% lot coverage and no limit on area dedicated to asphalt or paving stones. Coquitlam has no maximum finished floor area to lot size ratio, which only exacerbates the issue.
In these times of drought, it is moot to say only low-flush toilets or low-flow showers are allowed, when four times as many are in use. It is equally frustrating to see what little precipitation we are getting just go down the storm sewer instead of soaking into the soil that is no longer there.
We need council to admit that protecting Coquitlam from unbridled re-development of established neighbourhoods is not a bad thing. The water in the pipes alone of these oversize homes is enough to irrigate a small drought ridden country, or at least help out in our current situation.
Ken Holowanky
Coquitlam
