Editor:
In your Aug. 21 paper you asked Garry Nohr why the SCRD board didn’t choose a long-term solution regarding regional water sooner. His reply was, “Being one who voted to do it at the time, I can’t explain the answer of the other board members.”
I do not know what vote Mr. Nohr is referring to and as a member of the previous SCRD board I would like to shed my perspective on decisions we made regarding the regional water system. In June 2013 we adopted the Comprehensive Regional Water Plan which can be read on the SCRD website. The plan was prepared by the reputable firm, Opus Dayton Knight, in collaboration with SCRD water staff. It took some time to prepare and was adopted only after a lengthy consultation process to ensure that both the public and the other local governments could have their say.
The data used to inform this plan were from the years prior to the drought of 2012. Before that year, in the entire history of the regional district, Stage 3 restrictions had never had to be used, let alone Stage 4. The drought of 2012 is briefly mentioned in the document and climate change impacts are also talked about, but not in crisis terms. The advice received from the expert team who prepared this plan was that “Intensive Demand Management” (i.e., water meters to reduce consumption through finding leaks and moderating usage) would delay the need to implement the other future components of the plan such as increased storage and finding other water sources. For example, construction of another reservoir (or man-made lake) is pushed out to 2021 and even then that action only includes acquisition of land with the construction coming even later. When presented with this recommendation from the expert team, the entire board agreed to the plan. The components of the plan were never voted on separately. There was no separate vote on a “longer term solution.”
Another component of the plan was the drawdown of Chapman Lake if an emergency occurs. This would be a temporary solution to a drought situation. A group of concerned citizens addressed the board about the potential negative environmental impacts of drawing down the lake during a drought. They provided sufficient evidence to support their concerns and give the board of the day reason to pause. Staff were asked to bring back information on what environmental work would be needed to evaluate the impacts. I do not know whether this report has yet been produced.
The two years following 2012 saw a decent amount of rainfall and snow; 2015 is clearly another matter and predictions now indicate that this is a pattern that is here now, not some time in the future. Clearly the water plan needs to be reviewed and timelines changed. Hopefully by the time the paper comes out this week, the board will have made that decision at the Sept. 3 infrastructure meeting and begin the work of finding both increased storage and alternative water sources. Meanwhile, let’s not throw the previous board under the bus. With the information provided at the time, I would challenge anyone to have made a different choice.
Donna Shugar, Roberts Creek
