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South Okanagan Photos

No residential watering ban in Oliver

a water 3By ROY WOOD

Despite a province-wide drought, water levels in Oliver-area wells are not alarmingly low and town council decided Monday not to invoke water restrictions on domestic water users.

Town operations director Shawn Goodsell told council Monday that the provincial government has the power to impose water restrictions on the town if the drought moves from its current level 3 to level 4. “But I can’t see them doing that,” he said. Goodsell said that levels in the wells that supply residential users are down slightly, but not drastically. A table showed them to be between 3.6 and 10 per cent below average and well above the lows recorded during the 2009 drought.

Water use in the town has slowly been creeping up since it dropped dramatically in 2010 with the introduction of water meters and charges based on use.

Goodsell recommended that council consider imposing moderate water restrictions on residential users in an effort to “get people thinking about” their water consumption. “It may be difficult to come up with appropriate measures to determine when we institute water restrictions, but anything a community can do to reduce water waste right now supports all the hard work that’s gone on restoring the salmon fishery in Oliver and Osoyoos,” Goodsell said in his report to council. He suggested moving to the “stage one” water restrictions, which would see lawn watering limited to alternate days between midnight and 6 a.m.

Council decided not to follow Goodsell’s recommendation and instead agreed to have staff gather material in preparation for a possible public education process about water use and conservation. They also agreed to revisit the situation early next spring when information will be available about the snow pack and the likelihood of a drought again next year. Councillor Jack Bennest pointed out that since residents pay for their water use based on volume, any reduction in consumption would result in a loss of revenue for the town. The total water budget for the town is about $2.9 million. Of that, $2.4 million is raised directly from water billing.

Bennest and Mayor Ron Hovanes both lamented the lack of solid information about the town’s water supply. They urged the Okanagan Basin Water Board to provide data about the levels in the aquifers that supply Oliver’s residential water.