The Editor,
Re. “Water meters getting a look” (The Tri-City News, April 20).
Reading the annual talk about our so-called water shortage looming and the needs for conservation, water metering and cutbacks in usage to save the world, I have wondered do we have a shortage of water or just a storage shortage.
While busy working to pay the man his taxes and leave a crumb for my family to survive, grow and move ahead in our expensive region, I was able to sneak in some very basic research. Our water storage areas were built between 1890 and 1960. In 1960, Greater Vancouver had about 900,000 folks. In 2011, it looks like about 2.5 million. Call that 2.8-times growth. Has our water storage been expanded 2.8 times over the same period? If the regional district last built one in 1960 and we keep growing at only 1% a year, we are losing every year.
Some politicians promote the solution of installing meters at $400 to $1,000 a pop and spending more to promote conservation. What have we accomplished? Nothing, really, and we still have the math dripping away.
We would probably need an army of water folks installing, repairing and measuring those meters. We would probably need to work longer and harder to pay for them, too.
Some further basic research shows we get about 2,500 mm of rainfall annually in the mountains where the reservoirs are located. Let’s get serious before we talk about our shortage. Let’s get the clear facts on storage.
I suspect the clear solution will show we need more storage and, in doing so, it will prove to be cheaper, more efficient and build on our advantage here in this region. We have water, good clean water and shall I say buckets of it.
Calling all politicians in Metro Vancouver to do something smart for all the people here today and in the future: Build us some more storage before you make us all work harder for nothing.
Sean Barnett, Coquitlam
