When the Sunshine Coast Regional District declared a Stage 4 outdoor watering ban in August 2015, public health officials expressed some concern about the SCRD’s advice to the public to recycle “clean grey water” from bathtubs and sinks to water plants and vegetables. One political observer at the time noted that “clean grey” water was “an oxymoron for morons.”
Pouring grey water on food crops was not a good idea then and is not a good idea now. Quickly realizing the rawness of its message, the SCRD in 2015 amended its communication material, specifying that recycled household water should be “carefully and diligently applied” to the soil and root system but not the plant itself. These and other directives can still be found on the SCRD’s Stage 4 FAQ page, though it continues to reference “clean grey water that would otherwise be wasted,” perhaps to keep the advice legally ambiguous in case someone does contaminate their food crops with effluent and gets sick as a result.
In a land of normally abundant water, the SCRD prohibiting people from watering their vegetable gardens during the growing season came as a sort of breaking point. If 2012 was an anomaly (the regional district had never previously gone to Stage 3 let alone Stage 4 restrictions, as it did in October of that record-drought year), 2015 was the wakeup call. At least for the public it was. For SCRD directors, committed to following a “comprehensive” water plan based on pre-2012 data, not so much.
When it became clear early in 2017 that the touted solution to the problem – the Chapman Lake drawdown project – would only be deployed, like the siphon system, as an emergency backup during Stage 4, it also became clear that the SCRD board had failed miserably to address the No. 1 problem that it inherited: how to increase the water supply.
Preliminary steps are being taken now to investigate groundwater sources and scope out a reservoir site, but precious time has been lost dealing with side issues.
We have said before that a sense of urgency has been lacking, so it’s heartening to hear many of the candidates speak with passion and understanding on the issue and that virtually all of them recognize water as a top priority for the new board.
It’s a daunting challenge with few options on the table, none of them inexpensive. The task of the new board will be to determine the best options, take them to the public, and listen. And then, with as little delay as possible, to act.
We’re now in Stage 4 for the second consecutive year. The situation has gone from bad to worse. There really is no time to waste.
