Saturday, January 30, 2016

SAC's Tenure Approaching Wind-up


It won't be long now.

The Stakeholders' Advisory Committee has--since October 2015--met monthly at RDNO to deliberate Options 1 through 9 of the 2012 Master Water Plan since the $70 million borrowing referendum failed 11 months earlier.

The lack of MWP project funding brought to the fore a huge obstacle:  the obvious bias by consultants, bureaucrats and long-time elected officials to protect the Duteau Water Treatment Plant itself.  Frequently accused by the public of throwing good money after bad by promoting a plant whose source waters are virtually untreatable due to their poor quality--not to mention the likelihood of being the first source to be severely affected by climate change--officials have dug in their heels.
Officials are now up to their knees!

But when so much of Duteau's finished product is used for irrigating farmlands--lands and crops whose proprietors refuse to contribute more, not only to utility infrastructure but also to contribute towards continually increasing costs of providing that water--something's gotta give!

Officials have become so hard-wired in protecting Sacred Duteau that they--almost to a person--have blatantly disregarded various inaccuracies, indeed contradictions, in technical memoranda that created the 2012 version of the plan after the 2002 Master Water Plan, which proposed twinning of waterlines, was abandoned. 

No matter, believes this more-than-casual observer of the review process.

Citizens for Changes to the Master Water Plan's ~1,000 petition signatures initiated the plan's review, albeit not by the desired independent professional consultant , and today up to 18 members of the public continue their deliberations on what today are the five-year-old plan's shortcomings.

As the SAC review nears its conclusion, sparse media coverage from the area's lone print publication occasionally produced a few tasty bites that underscore public loathing and will prove to be the plan's fatal flaw, most recently:

(on agricultural fees) "That's a real hot-button issue
but we hear from residential customers
 that they don't like subsidizing agriculture" ... 
"We can all agree that it's not working."  GVAC Chair Cunningham

And we can all agree that the majority of today's elected officials stated they themselves would--during the campaign--vote against the borrowing referendum!

The one good thing about bureaucratic manipulation of data--outright lies as some folks called it--is that truth will prevail.
Eventually.
Especially among thinking people.

Here's a sampling of what SAC members have learned about Duteau Creek Water Treatment Plant (DCWTP), Mission Hill Water Treatment Plant (MHWTP) and the MWP 2012 generally:
  • During winter, when agriculture isn't irrigating, the cost to treat source waters at DCWTP is $363 per megalitre, compared to MHWTP's $83!  Four hundred and thirty-seven percent the treatment costs of MHWTP!
  • DCWTP's operating costs are at least $1.5 million annually.  That would pay the borrowing cost of over $21 million at current interest rates!  All without increasing GVW's current budget if total separation occurred.  To decrease the unacceptable costs, the preferable option is to complete the separation of agriculture and domestic lines (twinning), which in itself would achieve the presently unattainable goal of knowing the actual costs of operating agricultural lines.  
  • More than 80 per cent of DCWTP's chlorinated--and MWP's plan to filter--water is applied to farmlands and crops!
  • Interior Health is willing to negotiate deferral of water treatment!  All it takes is a comprehensive plan to achieve legislated quality.  To that end, MHWTP must first provide filtered water to domestic customers, extending the IH deferral timeline.  Using water from the Aberdeen Plateau--in summer rife with bureaucratically-unchallenged mud-boggers and illegal campers--as well as the uncontrollable risk of wildfires--plus allowed public use by fishers and hunters as well as industrial users doesn't bode well for easily decontaminated source waters.
  • You are blessed with lots of water" (consultant) flies in the face of the Okanagan Basin Water Board's nationally-exposed insult that Okanagan residents use twice the daily average of others in Canada!  OBWB included agricultural consumption whereas the per capita usage comparison used only Canada's urban results.  And that water is so scarce in this "only desert in Canada".  We have lots of water!
  • DCWTP's upland source waters are more susceptible to depletion from climate change than valley basin lakes.  Source security should be the prime driver of any water plan, and MWP's statement of reduced risk by having two sources--from earthquake damage, for example--doesn't hold water.  One large earthquake would affect the distribution pipes of both sources.  Okanagan Lake is the source of the North Okanagan's long-term domestic water supply as population growth occurs.  Also, Kalamalka Lake's location in the valley bottom supports continued domestic use.  All while agricultural demand is not expected to increase. 
  • Invasive mussels threat:  the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee has already approved--and budgeted for--moving the Kal Lake water intake, including an additional pipe to eliminate the potential mussel infestation by using chlorine.
  • A public-driven environmental desire to augment water for fish flows supports diverting water via the combination of Deer and Coldstream Creeks versus using it as irrigation water upstream.
  • DCWTP's disinfection byproducts regularly--and alarmingly--exceed by almost 40 per cent those at MHWTP.  Trihalomethanes, Haloacetic Acids (among others) are considered carcinogenic.  Haloacetic acids are used as a skin peel by the cosmetic industry.  The poor quality of Duteau's source waters on the Aberdeen Plateau, simply stated, equate to the necessity of having to throw more and more chemicals at it, just to bring the finished product to within the acceptable levels of the MHWTP.  And consider the risk to human health from aluminum (utilized as a flocculating agent at DCWTP).  Apart from the perceived connection to Alzheimer's Disease, the use of aluminum sulphate produces dangerous hydrogen sulphide gas in sewer systems.
  • Bureaucracy's desire to offer all domestic customers the same quality of water is severely impeded by having two sources, one of which is so inconsistent and incompatible, no matter how much "blending" is conducted.   The fact remains that the Aberdeen Plateau's waters are perfect for irrigation use...without treatment!

   

Bureaucracy is hoping SAC members haven't read her books.

"SAC members are intelligent and fully committed to the responsibility inherent to their review," says Kia, adding "bureaucrats and politicians are cautioned against discounting SAC recommendations."


It could signal the end of THEIR tenure.
 

Note
Campaigner Carole Cross, 59, died from a rare and aggressive form of Alzheimer’s and her brain was found to contain higher than usual levels of aluminum.
At the time, the West Somerset coroner said she had been exposed to "an excessive amount" of aluminum in the contaminated water.  Source article here.

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