Bowen Bulletin

Every summer, in the middle of July we are greeted with an announcement in the paper that water shortages are imminent and outdoor water use is to be sharply curtailed. On the face of it, one would assume that we are all on the same water system or all drawing our water from the same aquifer or that the potential shortage problems apply to at least most of the island. In truth, we have six major water systems with several smaller systems drawing from creeks, several small systems drawing from common wells, a number of properties drawing their water from creeks and shallow wells, numerous properties on individual deep wells that share small aquifers with their neighbours and a few homes that harvest rainwater. So the questions become; “Who do these water restrictions apply to and why are they really needed?”
There are very few topics that you can discuss on Bowen that are more loaded with half-truths and misinformation than water availability. Before looking at the social engineering aspect of water policy, it is important to recognize that people drawing from creeks, shallow wells and heavily tapped aquifers can face serious problems if their neighbours don’t conserve water during hot, dry summers. For the rest of us, those water restrictions probably have nothing to do with water availability at all. Most of the smaller public water systems have adequate water supply and their problem traditionally was that they didn’t have large enough reservoirs to tide them over the summer. However, now that Eaglecliff has completed its upgrade and Bluewater has connected to the new King Edward Bay system, the number of real water shortages are much less of a concern.
But old men have long memories and most of our water systems have advisory boards made up of men who remember just how bad it could get when water was scarce and people weren’t careful. Over the years, they’ve convinced themselves and their neighbours that wasting water is a sin. So they welcome water restrictions and want to see them enforced. If the reservoir is still 90% full when the rains come in November they don’t feel silly for haranguing people to conserve water. They’re proud of themselves for seeing their flock through another summer and they don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with being frugal with water even if you don’t have to be. Of course, they’ll also tell you that it doesn’t hurt to be frugal with everything else either.
So why not conserve water just on general principals? There are the annoying little things like watching your lawn go brown every July just when you would most enjoy it being thick and green and cool. But there are also a few real reasons to be concerned. The Snug Cove Sewer System is not performing as anticipated. It seems that there are two things that you have to worry about with sewage treatment. One is the volume of effluent that you release and the other is the quality of that effluent. The homes on Cates Hill pay for their sewer based on their water consumption. The last time I heard their consumption was about 166 gallons per day. That’s about 25% less than a household that doesn’t have water usage metered. The problem is that their sewage is too strong. There’s a thing called B.O.D. also called biological oxygen demand. The B.O.D. of the Snug Cove treatment plant, particularly in late summer, can get too high for the plant to operate within its design parameters. The Sewer District would like the Water District to let them dilute the sludge with pure water. Of course, this isn’t going to happen. Grafton Lake has plenty of water but the idea of wasting it drives people crazy. We tend to think of water as a renewable resource (and we all know how badly we’ve screwed those up) rather than a self-replenishing resource. So it is carefully hoarded at all costs.
As a study in human nature, it’s really quite fascinating. We live in a world where climate change is causing severe droughts, we live in community where several antiquated water systems have only recently been upgraded, and we have anti-development activists who love to perpetuate the idea that we will be in trouble if any more people move here. We also have developers standing in the wings rubbing their hands in glee.
At one time, a developer had to prove that each new building lot he created had access to 500 gallons of water every day. Over time, that amount has dropped because the engineers working for the developers can look at the amount of water that the average home actually uses and declare that they should be able to put in more lots because the per lot water requirements are unreasonably high. So in a community that has watering restrictions imposed every summer, the average usage is the amount that people use under duress, not the amount that they would use if left to their own devices. It’s quite a nifty mind game really. If you are on the Cove Bay water system, you could have huge lawns and run sprinklers all day long for the kids to run in and never, ever worry about running out of water. But I’m just like you; I let my lawn go brown every summer because that’s just how we do things here.