Water consumption still too high, despite restrictions
Posted July 22, 2015 12:04 pm.
Last Updated July 22, 2015 12:31 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Stage 3 water restrictions have been in effect for a couple of days, but people around Metro Vancouver are still using too much. And if we don’t change our habits soon, Metro Vancouver is warning our reservoirs may run dry.
We should be good until November if we get to the 1.2 billion litre a day threshold.
Right now, we’re at 1.26 billion, that’s an improvement from earlier in the week but Metro Vancouver Chair Greg Moore says it’s not good enough.
He is confident however, things things will eventually get back to normal. “Unless something incredible happens here and we get no rain right through the winter, which I think we’ll then have bigger concerns, then our reservoirs will come back to full capacity for next year.”
If we don’t reach our goal, he warns we’ll move to Stage 4 soon, something that’s never happened here.
“I think everybody should be concerned about it. We’re all in this together. This isn’t a Metro Vancouver or local government thing. We all own this together. We are managing it and we’re trying to do our best to communicate to people that we collectively have to reduce our water consumption and if we can do that then we should be fine.”
“On Monday were were at 1.46 billion litres that were consumed in one day. On Tuesday, we went down to 1.26 billion, so we’re definitely moving sharply in the right direction, but we still have to do more to get to that 1.2 billion litres of water consumed a day.”
He has some suggestions to help curb the use. “A lot people turn on the tap to get cold water and they out their finger under it for about a minute while they wait for the tap to get cold, well, take a jug, put some water in the fridge so you know the water is going to be cold all the time. The other thing we’re hearing people are doing is they might be washing their dishes in a tub and instead of putting that water down the drain, they go out and put that water into their garden.”
“If we could all reduce the length of our showers. And I know some people are saying ‘if it’s yellow let it mellow and if it’s brown flush it down.’ And some people are doing that because they’re really taking this to heart,” Moore adds.
Stage 4 water restrictions would include things like no watering outdoor sports fields or your garden.
