Dear editor,
My wife and I moved to this area some three and a half years ago and from the beginning have been hearing of the need to restrict water use.
This “need” was most often presented as a shortage of supply and restriction water use an environmental responsibility. Given the amount of water that every winter is released from Comox lake, it didn’t take long to figure out that the problem was not a shortage of water available but a lack capacity in the delivery system.
That was confirmed by either a letter to you or a news release, I don’t remember which, that was published in your paper sometime last summer or fall. In spite of the continuing growth in the number of homes in the Valley I have yet to read of any plans to increase that limited capacity to meet the needs of an ever-growing demand.
Rather I read the Comox Valley Regional District was happy with the widespread support for water restrictions, as determined by a recent survey.
It looks like the “solution” to this inadequate delivery capacity is to persuade or force the people who have lived in the area for years, and who have built and paid for the current system, to make do with less and less water so the newcomers can properly landscape their new houses with nice green lawns and plenty of shrubs.
As to the environmental “benefit,” I would make the following points:
a. when we use water, we do not “use up” water, every drop remains in the “system.” The only place I know where water is being removed from the system is in some oil fields where water is being pumped down wells to drive up the oil.
b. The water we “save” by using less is not saved at all and, if at some future date, our supply dwindles, any cutbacks we make now will make not a wit of difference and could possibly help bring on the problem.
c. Those of us who have lived in arid or semi-arid regions know well that the more a specific area dries out, the less likely it will get rain. Having lived most of my adult life in Saskatchewan, I have experienced this many times. A friend who grew up in Australia recently described having experienced the same thing in the area he grew up in.
d. As we are constantly being told, the release of carbon into the atmosphere is one of the main environmental problems the world faces. I do not disagree but given that problem, isn’t it strange that we are asking people to avoid keeping nice green lawns?
Growing plants, whether trees, shrubs, field crops gardens or grass, absorb carbon. Brown lawns give off carbon. Water is essential to healthy green plants and the greener we can keep the Comox valley, the more likely it will continue to be green.
It seems to me the emphasis should shift from water restriction to increased delivery capacity, and everyone should be encouraged “go green” by growing lots of plants of whatever kind they choose.
Sam Biro,
Comox
