Editor:
A year or two ago, Judy Skogstad, former SCRD planner, had a letter in the Coast Reporter recalling that in June 1982, the SCRD cut off the water along Highway 101 each evening from the Roberts Creek cemetery east towards Gibsons due to a shortage of water and the need to maintain fire-fighting capacity.
We live in that area, as we did in 1982 when our first child was born at the end of May. No one told us the water would be shut off, so this young mother, my wife, spent each evening until after midnight waiting and hoping that the water would come back so she could wash and put the baby to bed. We don’t want to have that happen again. We obey the regulations and more – my wife saves shower water so she can use it in the garden. And she wants us to wash our hands in the same bowl of water all day that then goes to the same end-use.
Today, there are farmers who think they should be able to use regional water right through Stage 4. And for the SCRD directors to even consider this is astounding. What about the thousands of ordinary residents who are just as dependent on their gardens? What about the rest of us? If there really is a water shortage, who will suffer if we reach the point where sections of the distribution network have to be shut every evening? Did any of the current crop of directors ever suffer through a situation like ours in 1982?
That this should be obvious leads me to pass along an observation noted to me: “Let me know when the water shortage is serious enough that farmers have to live like the rest of us. ‘Til then, they can feel free to just charge me by the meter too.”
Rick Andrews, Elphinstone
