Editor:
“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop for Sechelt.” Apologies to Coleridge, whose words seem so appropriate. In mid-August we entered Stage 3 Acute water restrictions – two weeks earlier than in 2017. And with barely enough pause for paperwork, we go to Stage 4 Severe rationing this week – a month earlier than last year. And everything we cultivate dies. Our water crisis is institutional.
Billions of cubic metres of water flow through Chapman Creek each winter and we fail to catch a fraction of one per cent for community use. Building a water reservoir to alleviate our crises will now take longer than the NASA Apollo Project took to go from a dream to putting a man on the moon – and no end in sight. That we have just let a feasibility study almost 10 years after they started writing the Comprehensive Regional Water Plan speaks volumes to the deficiencies in Regional and District governance. They love process but seem utterly incapable of achieving anything concrete.
Compare that to the community of Prince Albert, Sask., with a population similar to the Sunshine Coast. In the summer of 2016 they had a crisis when their water source suffered from an upstream oil spill and they had to lay an emergency water pipeline from an alternate source. They didn’t have enough water storage to get them through until the spill was cleaned up. That was two years ago. They broke ground on construction of a new water reservoir last month. They’ll finish early next year, building a reservoir in less time than our local government took to initiate a feasibility study.
Water is important to our community and the perennial severe rationing harms the quality of life of our residents. We need local politicians who will solve this in the next electoral mandate.
Keith Maxwell, Sechelt
