Sunshine Coast Regional District staff is to provide a list of the top 25 water users on the Chapman and South Pender systems to the board. But the public won’t see those details unless there is agreement to release them, as the request endorsed at the May 9 committee of the whole meeting stipulated that report go to an in-camera meeting. The recommendation, introduced by Sechelt director Alton Toth, requires board endorsement to be actioned, and a vote on that is to come at its May 23 meeting.
South Pender water permit renegotiations may introduce new limits
As board members queried what can be done this year to ease water restrictions for the South Pender system, staff warned that pushing the province for a water licence change could bring more restrictions.
During May’s Water Update, delivered at the meeting, infrastructure services manager Remko Rosenboom highlighted a risk the district may face if it were to ask the province to raise the water diversion rate for the systems primary source, McNeill Lake. He said such a request could be met with a call for the introduction of environmental flow need levels for Haslam Creek, which currently don’t exist, and that requirement could further restrict access to water. Those could also require the SCRD to do monitoring and data collection, projects that would take time to and require resources to complete.
Speaking to whether the SCRD should ask for a licence change, he said “once we have opened that door I think it will be hard to close it."
In his view, promoting water conservation and leak resolution efforts with system clients was the best approach to keeping the system in the lower stages of water restrictions this year. He noted that all SCRD systems went to Stage 1 on May 1 and that Stage 2 restrictions for South Pender will be called when daily usage demands exceed the daily McNeill Lake diversion levels.
Rosenboom confirmed that study and review projects, including work on potential licence amendments but no infrastructure improvements, were slated for the South Pender system in 2024.
He said that last year, supporting flows from Harris Lake were accessed with “staff and shovels." By adding flows from that source, McNeill Lake levels, although lower than staff have seen in previous years, did not fall below its intake point.
Daily 200 litre per person use target
The update identified a daily per person water use maximum target for all SCRD water clients of 200 litres per person per day.
In response to a director’s question, Rosenboom noted that it was an “arbitrary” target level but done in review of ones set elsewhere. He pointed to an example in France, where per person daily usage is set at 150 litres.
He detailed that the message to all water users if to “take only what you need, and to use all you take." He said the usage within the target would meet normal household needs. He suggested directors try to imagine pushing a shopping cart loaded with 200 one-litre water bottles to better understand the volume, summing it up with the comment, that the volume likely would not fit in a standard cart.
When asked if staff had details on the impacts of visitors to the Coast on water use, he noted that was a difficult thing to estimate. “I am still failing for my magician’s licence,” he said, but offered up the anecdote that staff have looked at water use on summer long weekends and have not seen a significant uptick in overall water use. His assessment was that while many visitors do come to our area on those dates, many locals use those times to travel off the Coast.
Rounding out the discussion on usage targets, Area E director Donna McMahon, who said she has monitored her two-person household’s use over several years, stated that “has never exceeded 200 litres per person per day."
