Water is in the headlines all around us, and this should inspire us to take a moment to appreciate the water we get to enjoy in Squamish.
A dispute that has been rolling at a slow boil for years in Pemberton and a boil-water advisory in Gibsons last week has put residents of our neighbouring communities on edge.
The Town of Gibsons detected on June 6, through regular monitoring, that e-coli was present in the community’s water system. Town officials moved quickly once the potentially deadly bacteria were discovered. Residents were informed through social media, radio and word of mouth that drinking water from taps across Gibsons needed to be boiled to remove any hint of e-coli.
The advisory was ultimately lifted when the Sunshine Coast Regional District hooked its water system up with the Gibsons system.
The advisory was lifted on Monday. There’s a long list of places around B.C. with boil-water advisories for a variety of reasons. Take the Ocean Falls Townsite, for example. According to the provincial government, Ocean Falls residents have been boiling their drinking water since 2002.
The situation in Pemberton isn’t life-threatening but quite serious in a whole different way. The Village of Pemberton sells bulk water to the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (SLRD) and the SLRD then puts that water into its Pemberton North Water System (PNWS). The village and the SLRD have been arguing for years over the value of that water. Due to this dispute, the SLRD has been holding back payments for the water. The village is getting impatient, with the tab now sitting at $978,000. The tap is still open and the debt is growing. The village has in the past threatened to simply turn off the flow of water to the PNWS.
The village needs to get utility invoices out soon, but the dispute is holding up the billing process.
“We need to get these invoices out,” says Daniel Sailland, chief administrative officer for the Village of Pemberton. “It has a direct impact on our cash flow.”
Because the issue dates back to 2007, Pemberton has a statute-of-limitations concern. The village is running out of time to collect unpaid funds from the earliest days of the dispute.
According to Sailland, the amount of money owed represents more than 100 per cent of what it costs to run the entire water system for a year.
Susie Gimse, the SLRD representative for the folks who live in the area serviced by the Pemberton North system, wants to ensure her constituents are being charged a fair rate for their water. She and Sailland both say negotiations are ongoing.
Meantime, at the recent B.C. Water and Waste Water Association conference in Whistler, Squamish’s drinking water was judged against that of 10 other communities across the province. We lost to Kelowna. Our water is amazing, so the contest results suggest Kelowna’s water must be really amazing.
Water is easily overlooked but our neighbours in Pemberton and Gibsons will tell us it sure can be painful when issues arise.
