Editor:
I use water very carefully. I'm sure many people do; but there are too many who think we have an endless supply.
I'm in favour of water meters. It's only fair that people pay for the amount they use.
I am one person living in a small house with one bathroom. I do a load of laundry a week. I don't have a dishwasher. I don't have an automatic sprinkler that sprays everything including the driveway. I don't water my lawn in summer. I water flower beds with a hose. I don't own a pressure washer and spend hours washing my driveway or house siding. A neighbour recently had the roof of his enormous house pressure washed. This project took several days, several hours each day, perhaps using thousands of gallons of water.
Why should I pay the same for water as people who use three or four times as much as I do, who live in three or four bedroom houses with several bathrooms - the showers, dishwasher, washing machine always in use?
I look after a couple of vacation rentals and I have done as many as eight loads of laundry in one day after a large group. There are a lot of vacation rentals on the Sunshine Coast. These houses use a vast amount of water. The owners should pay a higher rate for "commercial" water usage. They make good money from these rentals, and they use far more than their fair share of our water supply.
Nevertheless, regardless of how much people pay for water usage, it's not going to create any more water. But if people had to pay according to the amount they use, they might be more careful.
Cecilia Ohm-Eriksen
Sechelt
