Interior Health wants NORD to add a filtration system to the Duteau Creek Treatment Plant in the next few years, saying it will prevent diseases like crypto-sporidium.
BX Silver Star director Mike Macnabb questions spending up to $10 million when there's never been any cases of crypto in this area.
"That is a huge increase for perhaps a very small diminishment of any kind of potential problem. That's my concern, that we may be chasing too few bugs with way too much money."
He says it hasn't been proven scientifically that illnesses people experience on a yearly basis are directly related to the water.
Macnabb suggests the better idea would be to protect the Duteau Creek watershed.
Interior Health's Roger Parsonage told the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee they can't provide funding for filtration, but would support NORD in grant applications.
The agency wants the filtration added by 2015.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is easy to demand when money is no object since money is the responsibility of another jurisdiction. When overcrowded hospitals need extra funding Interior Health claims lack of funding as a reason for overcrowding. However, they make unreasonable demands on local governments disregarding the fact that local governments are also stripped of cash and they cannot exceed their borrowing limits.
Here we have a situation where the utility has to provide good quality water for the domestic user but the same delivery system is used for both domestic and agricultural use. Agriculture uses about 80% of the water and, although they don't need to have it treated, by necessity they use the treated water for irrigation. This is a great waste of money.
The solution is not simple. We could separate the distribution lines and only treat the water for domestic customers. That requires additional money. The alternative is the treatment of all the water at ever increasing costs. In order to treat all the water agriculture needs we have to construct a huge treatment plant at extra cost and then filter all the water regardless of use. Filtration is very expensive and either solution (separation or extra filtering costs) require more funds than the community can afford. Even if we would decide to pay for the increased costs our borrowing limits might prevent us from doing so.
These are some facts that Interior Health needs to consider before they place unreasonable demands on local governments. Local governments would love to be able to provide the best quality water but they must find a way to make it affordable to the taxpayers. Any chance of some extra grants IH?
********************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment