Like a lot of folks here, I get most of my information pertaining to the area from The Morning Star.
I’m very surprised that I am not reading anything positive from any of the candidates for office in Vernon or Coldstream. By positive, I mean anybody coming out and honestly saying, “I will work very hard to correct the problems with the water plan as proposed. I don’t agree with it in its present form and will not vote in favour of it until some common sense is put in the mix.”
Common sense tells me to leave the Duteau Creek site alone. Let is supply the 80 per cent of needed water and upgrade what’s needed to supply the other 20 per cent of domestic water.
Is this so hard to understand? We are some $60 million into it, maybe more, so far. Now we have phase two. They forgot that the original $60 million was phase one, and phase two is $70 million. We know it will be a lot more and after that, phase three for $40 million, and then probably phase four and even a five. It’s a bottomless money pit.
I would like to see a projection of our annual water household bills over the next 20 years using the present proposal versus having two completely independent systems as I have outlined (and we don’t give agricultural water away).
Please keep in mind that if we don’t bite the bullet somewhere, we, according to some sources, will have the highest water bills in the Okanagan if not North America or the world. If we don’t do something about this now, we probably never will.
The Interior Health Authority will not, and cannot, force us into something that doesn’t make sense as long as they are satisfied that we are doing our best to correct our previous mistakes (which will be best in the long run), by having people not afraid to put aside their book-learning and reports from others who also only have book learning to reach decisions which also require common sense learning.
There is no way you can learn common sense. You either have it or you don’t. We need new people who have it and are not afraid to say so. Let’s elect, appoint and hire some.
J. V. Methot
Coldstream
