Water Week – Know The Flow
Prince George, B.C. – This is water week in B.C. and the City of Prince George wants you to learn more about its water distribution system.
The City has over 550 thousand meters of water distribution pipes along with ten pump stations, 15 reservoirs and six wells.
The system delivers , on average, 189 thousand litres of water a day, drawn from aquifers, to residents and businesses in the City. The daily use for all customers is 655.8 litres per person per day, an amount that is well above provincial and national daily water use averages.
Below, a 2009 graph showing Prince George’s per capita daily usage was lower than it is now. graph courtesy City of Prince George
The City has prepared a water conservation plan which it hopes will reduce average daily residential water use from 588 litres per day to 470 litres per day by 2025. ( click here to access full report).
There are also year round water restrictions. For most areas of the City, sprinkling is only allowed by even numbered properties on even numbered days, and odd numbered properties are clear to sprinkle on odd numbered days. Generally, there is to be no sprinkling between noon and 5 pm, except in the Western Acres area of the City which are not to sprinkle between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. That region includes properties abutting: Cinch Loop, Hartman Road, Cantle Drive, Corral Road, and Western Road, and the frontage road north of Highway 16 West, from the 8100 block of Highway 16 West to the City’s western boundary.
While there is a fine for violating water sprinkling rules, ($50.00) the report presented to the City last summer indicated not one fine has ever been issued.
To help residents learn more about the water distribution system and conservation efforts ( including a volunteer metering program) an open house will take place from 1-5 today at one of the City’s water booster stations located at 2933 Andres Road. “One of the many attractive aspects of Prince George is the high quality of our water,” says City Environmental Assistant, Andrea Byrne. “We are hoping interested residents will join us on to learn more about the first-rate aquifers that produce our water and the infrastructure that gets it to your tap.”
Comments
Water metering in this city is as dumb as the idea to tax residential garbage loads brought to the landfill.
PG has plenty of water, with no shortage what so ever other than manufactured shortages by those who would like to put meters on every home and privatize the distribution system to for profit distribution.
The only barrier to water in PG is the cost of pumps and the maintenance of the system… which is a large fixed capital cost for the system with very little incremental cost for volume. The aquifers we have in PG are world class and continually refilled by the Nechako River which it sits under.
Any move to metering is not in the best interests of the citizens of PG IMO.
Their method of measuring resident usage is hugely flawed. Since all water used in the city is from the same source, in other words the same water used to irrigate places like soccer fields, baseball fields, park, etc is the same water as we drink, it stands to reason they simply look at the overall amount of water used per day and divide it by the residents who are city water and come up with 655.9 litres per day per person. I call a huge BS on that, there is no way our house even come close to using that much water per day, we never water our lawn, there are only 2 adults in our house, so we are not doing laundry every day, etc. Do places like Canadian Springs Water have their own water source, pumps, etc or are they lumped in with general usage? Without metering they haven’t a clue how much the average household uses. Quit BS’ing us city. Just looking to make even more money from individuals is what they are up to.
I get very annoyed reading an article like this. The single largest factor in the lumped daily consumption figure is system leaks. No one at your City wants to confront the truth that a steady increase in leakage contributes to the “astonishing” consumption of water greedy residents in your City.
And, why doesn’t the City fix the leaks ? They are too busy tripping over dollars looking for pennies.
The City is built on a gravel pit. Leaks do not come to the surface in a gravel pit. Arrrrgggggghhhhh.
V.
So which one is it?
“The daily use for all customers is 655.8 litres per person per day…”
or
“The City has prepared a water conservation plan which it hopes will reduce average daily residential water use from 588 litres per day”
Based on the 655.8 figure, a 4 person household would use 2623.2 litres per a day, well above the residential average of 588. It’s confusing.
While there is a fine for violating water sprinkling rules, ($50.00) the report presented to the City last summer indicated not one fine has ever been issued.
Who the hell wrote this report?
I have received a fine for this, I mistakenly watered my lawn at 4:30 one time and my across the street neighbor got one for watering on the wrong day.
I wonder if we approach the city with a copy of the report they would refund us the $50 fine they say they didn’t issue.
With errors like this I have a hard time believing anything in that report.
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