I always have respect for those with the courage of their convictions and a willingness to state them. So, while I don’t always agree with the positions taken by Anita Strong or the local chapter of the Council of Canadians, their views are honestly held.
That said, City council recently received a letter from Ms. Strong (which was also published in this paper) outlining her reasons for opposing water meters. Her arguments fall into two categories. First, City council and staff have not done enough exploring of alternatives and, second, this could be a first step towards privatizing our water system.
Dealing with the latter point first, I have a gauntlet of sorts to toss at the feet of Ms. Strong and the organization she represents. Show me a single publicly owned municipal water system where the installation of water meters led to its privatization anywhere in Canada.
The vast majority of Canadians already receive water through a publicly owned and metered water utility. Kelowna, Vernon, Penticton, Osoyoos and Oliver are nearby examples of communities that have introduced water meters yet have remained public, not-for-profit purveyors of domestic water. Former Green Party candidate and now Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson has announced that Vancouver is going down the same path. This fear of meters causing privatization has not manifested itself in any Canadian context that I have seen.
In earlier columns on this topic I pointed out that we had a local example of a private water system in Rose Hill. It is an understatement to make the observation that this system faced some issues between its owners and the residents of Rose Hill. A second observation is that, while private, this system was not metered. This underscores the simple fact that a private system does not need meters to operate at a profit.
Meter installation and billing represent an operating cost that tends to reduce consumption (which is production if you are a private provider) and one can make as much profit more easily simply increasing the flat rate and having some arbitrary rules based on property size.
To be fair, private municipal water systems do exist. The largest in British Columbia is in White Rock and parts of South Surrey. This particular system has been private for over 70 years and yes, it is metered. Unmetered water systems in cities are the exception rather than the rule. Experimentation with private infrastructure in New Brunswick and Ontario produced reviews that are something less than glowing. They have not revealed any compelling arguments for privatizing municipal infrastructure.
Ms. Strong also alluded to Bill 237 in Ontario that would require municipalities to set up separate municipal corporations to run water and waste water systems. These corporations would be required to recover their full costs and to meter the provision of water and wastewater.
The MPP who drafted and put forward this bill asserts that its purpose is not privatization, but to create a fund to replace aging infrastructure. The reality is that this private member’s bill (opposed by both the NDP and the Conservatives) has been sent to committee and has very little chance of being passed into law. Ontario municipalities have also come out solidly against this bill while recognizing that some of their century old water infrastructure is in desperate need of replacing.
Unlike Ontario, municipalities in BC already run their water systems as not for profit stand alone utilities. We already recover all our operating and capital costs for the provision of water and the handling of wastewater through a separate municipal utility bill.
As for exploring alternatives to reduce water use, the details will have to be explored in another column but the short answer is as follows. Our issue is outside water use. In cold months our water system works at about a quarter of its capacity meaning we have enough winter capacity for a city quadruple our size. In winter, our utility delivers about 35 million litres of treated water per day.
On a warm summer day this usage can spike to 140 million litres. It’s managing this peak demand that is the issue. Low flow toilets, while a good idea from a wastewater perspective, don’t reduce water use enough to make a significant difference. Having fewer watering days means that we end up with extreme water use on the allowed days and this ends up straining the capacity of the system more than an alternate day system.
We have been exploring alternatives to meters for decades and we still end up at the same place. The absence of a direct and individual financial incentive to conserve leads to a higher aggregate level of water consumption.
Locally, our goal remains the provision of reasonable levels of clean water to all residents at a price they can best afford. There is no agenda, hidden or otherwise, beyond this simple objective.
