To the editor:
Your decision to place the water meeting report on the front page of the Feb. 26 edition of the Free Press will be appreciated by 108 Mile Ranch’s 1,000 homeowners.
It’s unfortunate Kala gave erroneous answers to three questions.
• Return of the lake level to historic levels will not occur naturally: My comment is the Cariboo Regional District’s (CRD) decision to limit sprinkling to every second day has resulted in the aquifer providing adequate flow to the pump without drawing down the 250-foot crack from the lake. Hence, the Kala (Geosciences Ltd.) figure of 33% becomes 0%.
In contrast, the lake level will rise seven inches per year; 10 inches per year if the golf course is supplied from the unused wells at 106 Mile and Easzee, as proposed by the Duncan/Leslie report of 2008.
• During a drought year … (paragraph 8): During my 44 years in the South Cariboo, there never has been a drought year. Watson Lake has always remained full, with its overflow feeding the Ducks Unlimited ponds in the Walker Valley.
Surface Water Extraction 31%: The only extraction is for golf course irrigation, which uses far less that its licence permits.
• What does Kala mean by this statement: “Lake levels will drop until the lake area is small enough …?
Over the past five years, precipitation has exceeded evaporation. Despite no inflow from the Tubbs Lake watershed, the level of Succour Lake had by late summer 2014 reached overflow, as the V-notch flowmeter at the 108 Heritage Site has shown.
The Kala figure of 36% of evaporation over precipitation makes no sense.
Those people who walk the lakeshore trail expressed their delight that the lake’s level had, in summer 2014, risen by over one foot.
Spending $115,000 on a well into the north aquifer to provide six inches rise a year – confirmed by an unnamed third-party consultant – is economically unrealistic.
Regarding the CRD’s proposal to spend $5 million on a treatment plant except to say that since 1997, our water softener and reverse osmosis unit has provided 100% pure water.
Neil Duncan
108 Mile Ranch
