VOTE JOHN DACOMBE FOR COURTENAY COUNCIL
Water
Water is the City’s biggest annual operational cost, and most of that cost (approaching $7M last year) goes to bulk water purchases from the CVRD at $1/cubic meter – 6.6 BILLION litres last year.
The fact nothing has been done to mitigate this is because of the inaction of Courtenay Councils going back decades.
In the summer, residents use over 900 litres per resident per day, a staggering amount (in Vancouver it’s 545 litres per person per day in summer, and that’s considered high).
While commercial and multi-residential properties in Courtenay have volumetric metering, single family residential (SFR) - where the majority of Courtenay residents live – pay a flat rate for water.
Where does all that water go?
Leaks: Nobody knows how much we lose in leaks, but 20% is considered average in Canada;
Lawn watering: estimated at another 30%;
All that other stuff that doesn’t actually need potable water, like your neighbour who power washes his driveway every weekend because he pays a flat rate for water.
And summer water usage is going up at over double the rate of population growth, which is clearly unsustainable from both a financial and environmental perspective.
In economics, this is called the “tragedy of the commons”: using more of a resource costs the same as using less of the same resource, so there is no disincentive to wastage. In layman’s terms, that means you are subsidizing people who waste ridiculous amounts of water. Whether you use 1 gallon or 1 billion gallons as a Courtenay SFR homeowner, you currently pay the same.
You're also paying for that 20% leakage that there is no incentive to find and fix - again, because flat rate.
So what are the solutions to this?
Universal volumetric water metering must be expedited. It should have been introduced decades ago, so dragging this out for 12 years, as the current Council has voted to do, is poor policy. The timeline must be reduced to 5 years;
Metering must be tier priced so as to lower costs for average and below-average users.
Let’s be clear: any Courtenay Council candidate who does not support universal volumetric water metering will fail in any attempts to lower your tax burden, and the alternative, extremely expensive schemes being promoted by some candidates would mean an exponential increase in your property taxes.
I will introduce motions in the first 100 days to strengthen the currently weak regulations regarding water use and ensure that residents who use average or below-average amounts of water will see lower taxes and fees.
These measures will save $1-3M/year once fully implemented.
But don’t we live in one of the wettest places on the planet?
No, we don’t. That’s the west coast of Vancouver Island. We are in a rain shadow and receive one-third of the rain of Tofino (1200mm versus 3300), and only 20% of that falls in the Spring and Summer. And the days of large snowpacks every winter, feeding Comox Lake all summer, are over, due to climate change.
Are you going to stop me from watering my gardens?
No. Currently, the only restrictions on watering gardens are at Stage 5.
But the City claims it will only save $1M/year from universal volumetric water metering?
The average reduction in Canada after metering is 39%, far more than the 15-30% the City claims.
How much will this save taxpayers in the longterm?
The City assumes gross savings of $89M over 25 years and net savings of $12M, and a high installation cost of $25-27.5M. The City has also refused cost-saving proposals, like installing meter-ready boxes when water repairs are occurring at older homes, and allowing homeowners to privately install meter-ready boxes on their own initiative.
Realistically, costs should be lower and savings higher once metering is complete.
Why not build another dam, maybe on the Cruikshank River?
First, all that land is privately owned by forestry companies. Whether the City was legally allowed to expropriate it (unlikely, being the dam is unnecessary) or not, it would have to be purchased at fair market value, plus reasonable damages. That’s the rule in BC.
Then, even if the dam received regulatory approval (again unlikely, being the dam is unnecessary), there’s the construction costs. There has only been one dam built in BC in recent years (Site C, cost $16B), but recent seismic upgrades to the John Hart dam, which it could be argued is located in a similar canyon topography to the Cruikshank, cost $923M. That’s for seismic upgrades, not a new dam.
Here’s an extremely low-cost alternative to a new dam: water metering, which will reduce usage by 39% and cost a tiny fraction what a new dam would.
Why not build a desalination plant?
There’s a reason there are zero potable water desalination plants operating in Canada: they use massive amounts of energy, are extremely environmentally damaging, and are very expensive to build and operate - and it’s unlikely any federal or provincial government would approve the construction of one.
Currently, the raw fresh water Courtenay uses is produced for free - $0/M3 – because it comes from rain, snowmelt and glacier melt that flows into Comox Lake. The only costs are associated with treatment and transportation.
With desalination, production cost estimates range from $.50/M3 to $2.50/M3 and that does not include transportation. So, right from the start, the cost of water is 50 to 250 times higher than the current cost.
And construction costs would be astronomical: Courtenay is on a shallow estuary and desalination requires deeper water, so where are you going to build it? Next to the sewer treatment plant at Point Holmes? Then you need to build a dedicated pipeline. Costs would be hundreds of millions of dollars, just for construction.
If you think your water bills are high now, wait until desalination.
Instead of very expensive schemes that don’t address the fundamental problem – leaks and excessive discretionary usage because of flat rate fees - why not spend a fraction of the amount and actually deal with the issue through metering?
