On Tuesday evening, October 25, 7 p.m., at the Parksville Community and Conference Centre, there will be a public meeting to explain the intricacies, the advantages, the problems, and the possible actions (and their costs) to be taken to ensure a safe and adequate water supply for communities and their various uses within the Arrowsmith Water Service area.
This meeting will feature practical — i.e. sensible, do-able, and cost-effective measures, which can answer the system’s needs now and in the future.
It will also explain a plan that seems to be getting serious consideration, though it may not be the most suitable plan for this water system from a practical standpoint.
One such plan under consideration is ASR — Aquifer Storage and Recovery.
In the most simple, and probably old-fashioned sense, before the days of the ubiquitous short forms, ASR was a natural, ongoing process: water fell from the sky, it eventually seeped through the ground in porous areas, it filled up available spaces underground (aquifer) below the vegetation level, and more or less stayed there (storage) until a ‘be-witching’ human came along and sunk a well to retrieve it (recovery) with a bucket.
Because of today’s ever-expanding population and industry, and their prodigal use/waste of water, many of our dependable sources of water, our aquifers, are being depleted more rapidly than they can be naturally recharged.
Enter the modern day ASR. With miles of pipe, heavy equipment, power consumption, and sanitary treatment (all of which will cost a lot of money), man can take water from one source where it’s plentiful, treat it once, pump it into a tired and depleted aquifer for awhile, pump it out again, treat it again, and deliver it to thirsty taps, sprinklers, and toilet tanks around the AWS.
Is this sensible problem-solving and progress?
Will ASR meet the demand?
ASR has been tried/used in India and Australia, but are these parts of the world with problems and topography similar to Oceanside? It would seem that our seasonal supply of water and the ‘slant’ we have in our favour needs to be seriously considered.
How about a helping hand to Nature to let her do what she does best — supply our necessary needs as she has always done? (Maybe some of these ideas would get the U.S. off our back, too, about letting all our rain run into the sea instead of shipping it to them!)
Our watersheds’ wetlands, those super re-chargers of aquifers, can be strenuously protected; manmade wetlands or other simple storage facilities at higher elevations could help store excess runoff and provide gravity fed water to current systems for use in dry seasons; re-charged groundwater and surface water could be used together and allow extra adaptability at times.
What of a kind of two-tier system where treated water is used only for uses where such is required? Untreated or even grey water can work safely for multiple other uses.
Moving from the formal AWS to the individual people dependent on its decisions and expertise, each person, each community, can contribute to the sensible use of the world’s most precious resource.
Use rain barrels for garden-watering or car-washing.
Raise good old fashioned water towers/tanks in the neighbourhood.
Study any new system being put forward, be critical, ask questions. Are there less expensive ways to do the same job?
When it comes to water rights, let’s get it right!
Look up www.inovationbc.com. Click on “Local Water” and get a really good illustrated explanation on AWS/ASR.
— Nancy Whelan is a regular News columnist.
