Second SAC Meeting Disappoints

Overall, the meeting was disappointing.
It lived up to its billing as a review of data that formed the 2012 Master Water Plan, with the same consultants and staff, albeit with appointed SAC members and a public gallery. 


Thursday's Stakeholder's Advisory Committee meeting at RDNO began with a one-hour presentation by Interior Health's regional director of health protection, Roger Parsonage.

Roger provided the example of Kamloops and their water treatment plant (which--it was previously rumoured, and remains uncorroborated--was built entirely with government funding in 2005).

In a nutshell, Mr. Parsonage minimized--indeed contradicted--the fear mongering of Greater Vernon Water regarding filtration about issuing a filtration Order as the second--crucial--part of the Multiple Barrier approach to source water protection.

The scientific reason for a multiple barrier against pathogens (protozoa) is simple.  Chlorination alone has little, if any, effect on Cryptosporidium and Giardia, especially during higher turbidity events (seven events since May, 2012, and two plant "downtimes").   E. coli bacteria are present only in humans and other warm-blooded animals.  Some protozoa are human parasites, which can lead to many illnesses (Malaria, Amoebiasis, Giardiasis, Toxoplasmosis, Cryptosporidiosis, Trichomoniasis, Chagas disease, Leishmaniasis, Sleeping Sickness, Amoebic dysentery, Acanthamoeba Keratitis, and Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis,) according to Wikipedia.

To the question from a SAC rep "can filtration be deferred for, say, up to 20 years?" Roger Parsonage paused, then replied flatly, "No".  But that filtration deferral may occur as long as a plan is in place to enact a multiple barrier approach, AND that it also depends on source water test results.  He assured SAC members that Interior Health--province-wide--does NOT have different rules for different areas.  It is the source waters that are different.

The clincher here was "as long as source water quality tests find little variation," which obviously makes the Duteau Creek source waters--rife with wildlife/domestic cattle, as well as recreationists, neither of which have been excluded by any government agency.

(Blog opinion:) A community's Water Supply should be declared a Priority User over all other use, including public use, but that hasn't occurred in the Aberdeen Plateau's highlands!  For example, in North Dakota officials have managed to somewhat separate "legal water rights" from "priority of use" (intent) of waters.  The priority North Dakota established was:

• Domestic
• Municipal
• Livestock
• Irrigation
• Industrial
• Fish, wildlife and other outdoor recreational uses

Back to Roger Parsonage's presentation.

To support the trigger for the multiple--two-stage--approach, he stated that Interior Health has access to Medical Services Plan classifications where doctors' billing to the provincial health plan defines the class of the ailments.  IHA looks for "intestinal" complaints which "indicate a level of endemic illness occurring in a community".

To the question posed by a SAC member "could the 'intestinal' classification also include non-water-source reasons?"  (A good question, and presumably the questioner meant pre-diagnosed Crohn's Disease, Diverticulitis, etc.).

To that question, after another brief pause, Roger Parsonage replied "Yes, it could."

Next were ~2 hours of disappointment.

Disappointing rehashing by three consultants of spurious and now known to be hugely inflated water demand numbers (obviously given them by GVW bureaucrats to develop the MWP) that not only determined the size of the water treatment plan at Duteau, but also led to the decision to minimally separate agriculture--from domestic--lines.

One after another, consultants justified work based on projected water demand, seldom if at all referencing now-known actual consumption, year after year on the MWP.  

As the following table shows--to which consultants are now privy--the sheer immensity of over-projected numbers (percentage) versus actual consumption must make them shake their heads in disbelief...privately, that is.

Courtesy:  G.Kiss

And agricultural (allocation) demand versus domestic, extended to a 40-year horizon:

The consultants one after another stammered through huge projected numbers, each year never met by actual demand, culminating in "2011 metered domestic was 7205" (versus the stated 9,670).  Dale McTaggart, engineering boss at RDNO, said agricultural irrigation's actual remains at 12-13,000 a year.  

Seems they have a classification for the disparity too:  the difference is called a buffer.

So how accurate could the following GVW document be...it itemizes some classes of water use that previously were lumped into one category, or weren't previously reported at all in any classification,  likely hastily produced in reply to a 2014 question (this table finally splits ICI from the Domestic category):

Is it any wonder that numbers are all over the map?

Another disappointment was the lack of support for a Motion from Terry Mooney, of Citizens for Changes to the Master Water Plan, to move TM9 to an earlier slot, perhaps November 19th or December 3rd (the extra meeting date).  The rationale for the Motion was that its Options were felt necessary to review earlier than the projected date of December 17th.

While Mr. Mooney's suggestion lacked support, GVW's TM4 Summary Paper provided silent support for the CCMWP motion with its reference to "Methods, point 3, the model 'scenario' used Option 1 of TM9 (no further pipe separation for Agriculture)."
 

"A buffer?" asks Kia, adding "Get me a Bufferin please."

Note:  Google definition defines "buffer" as:  a person or thing that prevents incompatible or antagonistic people or things from coming into contact with or harming each other.

Google must've been present during MWP consultations.