Do we need to increase the capacity of the Aberdeen Reservoir?
By Gyula Kiss
Staff of Greater Vernon Water Utility is insisting that there is an urgent need to increase the capacity of the Aberdeen Reservoir without providing convincing evidence for such an increase.
“6. Question: Confirm option 2 includes upgrade/increase to storage facilities, as this was identified as an issue in earlier meetings.In order to verify (or not) this need I examined the available evidence for this need. The table below is a summary of actual annual water consumption as reported by GVWU staff in their Annual Reports from 2011 to 2014.
Answer: If you mean increasing the storage on Aberdeen, then yes this is included in Option 2. In fact all options include “Aberdeen Dam Improvements – Raise Dam by 4 metres” with the exception of Option 6 - using OK lake as the sole potable water source.”
The data presented here clearly indicate that there is no need for an increase of the Aberdeen water supply at this time or in the foreseeable future.
The current capacity of the Aberdeen Reservoir is slightly over 18,000 ML/a. The combined average water (the sum of agriculture and domestic water) consumption of years 2011-2014 is 12,791 ML/a including the Mission Hill source. Of this agriculture consumption averages 6,856 ML/a while the average domestic consumption was 5,935 ML/a.
Should we ever need to increase the size of said reservoir it should be a joint cost born by both domestic and agriculture customers. The current proposal places the costs of both the dam height increase and the Gold-Paradise works solely on the shoulders of the domestic customers.
The question may be asked: why are our employees so keen on spending nearly $10 million on a project that is clearly not an urgent matter? For over a hundred years the current reservoir provided customers with the water they needed without having the current controls of water usage. We now have water meters, high prices to reduce usage and a Drought Management Plan to address water shortages. Why spend all that extra money when customers are already hurting due to high water rates? One more comment: Option 7 does not need to contain dam increase costs nor Gold Paradise costs either.
This report was based on the information presented in the Appendices below.
Appendix 1. GVWU Water consumption in 2011 (GVWU Annual report - 2011)
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Appendix 2. GVWU Water consumption in 2012 (GVWU Annual report - 2012)
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Appendix 3. GVWU Water consumption in 2013 (GVWU Annual Report - 2013)
Appendix 4. GVWU Water consumption in 2014 (GVWU Annual Report - 2014)
Note: 1 ML= 1,000 m3
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2 comments:
From the annual reports, why didn’t you use the outflow totals, which are shown on 3 of the 4 annual report snapshots you took? 22,440 ML, 18,811 ML, and 16,217 ML.
Your 18,000 ML capacity for aberdeen reservoir appears to be incorrect – on the RDNO website, the posted master water plan says it’s 10,330 ML and that raising the dam would bring it up to 22,000 ML.
“Writing a letter to the editor is easy. Writing a factual letter is a whole lot more difficult.” Indeed.
I will respond to your comments on my blog so other interested parties could learn the facts.
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