The Editor:
Re: Burnaby approves multimillion-dollar plan for water meters in homes, pay-for-use coming 2027 (Dec. 7, 2024)
Dear Mayor and Council,
Your recent edict on water meters is most unimaginative. Clearly, there hasn't been much if any innovative thought given to this blanket solution of council's to our on going water shortages in the lower mainland and Burnaby.
It is patently obvious that this issue has crept up on all of you and the lack of ideas that could have mitigated this "catastrophy" have not been forthcoming... if only for some forethought.
The dripping has turned into a deluge while, as they say, Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
The lower mainland was once the sylvan home of a very large temperate rainforest with verdant stands of timber, hundreds of creeks, rivers, ponds and lakes. Now, they are all largely decimated and only remain as tragic reservoir remnants. Creeping encroachment has taken its toll.
And your solution is water meters. How unimaginative is that?
Toilet flushing likely takes up to 20 per cent of our water and you can correct me on that if I am off by any significant amount.
Would it be possible and prudent to remove toilets from the reservoir water and allow roof water to be collected from the houses and other roofed structures and then stored on site in cisterns to be used to flush toilets in lieu of using precious reservoir water?
Collected roof water could also be used in gardens as well.
I am certain that there are other innovative measures that could supplant the rather unimaginative blanket imposition of water meters.
Perhaps the Burnaby Engineering department could be tasked with finding other more "innovative" solutions.
- Darcy Olson, Burnaby
