RDCK Concerned about New Water Regulations

[as reported in The Valley Voice, June 15, 2011].

Earlier in June, Interior Health's Medical Health Officer met with RDCK's Rural Affairs Committee. It appears that most of the discussion centered around drinking water, specifically the new water regulations and the pressure those regulations will put on small communities and small water systems.

If anyone wants to see the effect of these new regulations, one needs go no further than the South Slocan, where a very expensive system is now in place (rumored to have cost in excess of $1 million). Never mind that almost no-one there wanted the new system; they have it now and will be paying for it. In part, this happened because the South Slocan water system was to be taken over by RDCK. Pressure was applied by Interior Health on the Regional District to fix the system so it met the standards of the Drinking Water Protection Act. Against many objections, the work was done.

It might be worth pointing out that the new regulations require two methods of treatment. Our system, owned and operated by PRWUS, has that kind of arrangement, a filtration system down to 1 micron and a chlorination system. We also monitor chlorine levels on a daily basis and water samples are sent in regularly to be tested for the presence of bacteria and other pathogens. So, for the time being, our system meets the requirements set out in the new regulations under the Drinking Water Protection Act.

I think it's clear from this that the Government is prepared to insist that drinking water quality across the province be improved. It's simply not going to be good enough to argue that "we've drunk the water from that lake (river, bog, whatever) for years and never had a problem with it". It's also clear that the Government won't be paying for these improvements, where they are needed. Our view is that it's always good to stay ahead of these things and never get in the position of having to play catch-up with the whims of Governments. Like most things connected with Government, they usually cost you money.

'Tis The Season

Not a phrase commonly used at this time of year, although with freak snowstorms happening in many parts of the country, who knows?

No, this marks the beginning of the 2011 maintenance season for PRWUS. Other than for emergency repairs, we always hope that anything major will be kind enough to wait until spring/summer/fall. Despite the cool weather we've experienced this spring, it's time to start getting into the mood for fixing things.

The full list of proposed projects, plus a record of what we've done for the past 2 seasons, is on our website.

Thanks to all the work done in the past 2 years, the list for 2011 is substantially smaller and includes a new roof for the treatment building, some finishing touches to the cliff water line box and some miscellaneous painting and general fixing up. With any luck,, then, it should be an easier summer for all of us.

Another Year Passes

The New Year has arrived, and besides the usual end-of-year hype, the date marks our first full year with water meters, consumption-based water rates and our new billing system. One of the most noticeable things is the big variation in water use between households. Not that this has been any surprise, but it reinforces the importance of households paying for what they use, just as we do for other commodities and services. Households using less are paying less. Households using more water are paying more. It's much more fair to everyone and also provides an incentive to be more aware of how much water we are using.

The time and money invested in system repairs over the past year indicate once again the costs of keeping our water system running safely and efficiently. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the system: Board members, maintenance team members, water team members; by fixing things, taking water samples, cleaning filters, making decisions about system operations, monitoring water levels, and so on.

Happy New Year.

Water Volume...By the Numbers

I was playing around with some numbers earlier today and came up with the following possibly interesting facts:

All of the main waterline from the Treatment Building up to the reservoir and down to the beginning of Pineridge Rd is 6" plastic pipe. Each 100 meters of this pipe will hold about 1766 litres. That's 1.77 m3 (cubic meters). For the metrically challenged, that's about 467 US gallons or 388 Imperial gallons. I haven't actually measured the approximate length of pipe our system would have, but it could be around 1 km (1000 meters)?

When we're filling the reservoir, we're pumping about 20 US gallons per minute. That's 1200 US gallons per hour or about 4500 litres (4.5 m3) per hour. That means it takes about 20 minutes to fill each 100 meters of our 6 inch plastic mainline.

More Treatment for the Treatment Building

With fall pretty much here, it's time to get a few projects tidied up in readiness for winter. One such is the outside of the Treatment Building.

There were two issues with this facility: the most important was the state of the roof. This is another case of 20-year shingles still on a building after about 30 years. That and the buildup of moss and the rubbing of tree branches. The other was just the look of the siding.

So, in addition to some recent work inside to repair crumbling drywall, the Treatment Building now has a new coat of stain. The new roof will go on next spring. For the winter, a few temporary shingles have patched the holes that were there under the moss. Next season we will finish all the repairs that this building badly needs.

Water Treatment - Some Comparisons

The Society occasionally gets questions about why we're using the water treatment system we do and why some other system might not be better or cheaper. In this post, I'm going to try and briefly outline the various options and how they compare.

It's first necessary to say that NOT treating our water is NOT an option. This would place our community under an immediate boil water order and expose residents and visitors to the risk of illness from water-borne pathogens and parasites. Kootenay Lake water might have been safe to drink untreated in the past, but it's not safe now. In fact, no surface water source can be assumed to be safe and when you're providing water to a community, you can't take the chance. Furthermore, as a water supplier, the Society is required by Provincial legislation to provide safe water. The required goal is something called the 43210 standard - more on that in another post. Treatment, in one form or another, is the only way to get those results.

There are essentially 2 treatment strategies: 1) centralized treatment, and 2) POE/POU treatment.

Centralized treatment is what our system uses now. All water pumped from the lake passes through this system and is stored in a reservoir for distribution. The big disadvantage to centralized treatment is that ALL water goes through this system, including water that is only being used to water the garden, wash the car and such. There is no easy or cheap solution to that problem. Our system uses filtration to 1 micron and chlorination. This is a process which has been proven safe, effective and cheap. There are other possible treatment processes, including UV, sand filters, charcoal beds and so on, but some of these are more suitable to larger municipal systems which are using large volumes of water. One concern with chlorination is the chlorine and chlorine byproducts remaining in the water we drink. Given the number of people world wide that also have chlorine in their water, this wouldn't seem to be an unknown problem, but if people have concerns, it can be dealt with at the tap with simple and cheap filters.

One additional advantage to using chlorine is that it protects against bacterial and fungal growth while the water is stored, for example, while it is sitting in a reservoir. This is a benefit that water treated with UV does not have.

From our standpoint, our centralized treatment system meets provincial quality standards, it's effective (we don't get bacteria in our water), it's cheap to operate (only a couple of hundred $$ each year), and that to fix or change anything we only have to go to ONE location, not each house on the system.

POE/POU stands for Point of Entry (where all water is treated as it enters each house) and Point of Use (where a filter might be attached to the cold water tap in the kitchen, for example). POE systems might include filtration (provincial regulations require filtration to 1 micron), UV, or some other process. POU systems generally would use some kind of filter at a specific tap but could also use reverse osmosis or distillation.

A community planning to use a POE system would need to have 100% of the residents approving and agreeing to use this system. There would need to be equipment installed at each house, the Water Society would need regular access to that equipment to service it and the equipment would be owned by the Society. The cost would depend on what process was used, but could be anywhere from $500 to several thousand $$ per house. Instead of having one service location, there would be 26 (with our community's size) and even if each system cost only $500, we'd be looking at $13,000 to install a system like this.

POU systems can be installed by anyone on any tap they want. Consumers could also have their own distillation or reverse osmosis system. Such systems alone would not be approved by Interior Health for a community water supply.

The bottom line for us is that we have a system that is working now, requires little maintenance to operate and is cheap and effective.

Water Society AGM

The Society's AGM for the Fiscal Year 2009 was held on Sunday afternoon. About 18 members attended. A few basic highlights:

Maintenance (a favourite topic on this blog) has been in high gear since last spring and many essential projects have been completed with others identified for future attention. A few items remain on the agenda to complete before winter.

So far in 2010, about 175 volunteer hours of work have been contributed to the maintenance of the system. This doesn't include the time spent by people on water teams, the Board, taking water samples, testing for chlorine, doing the financial records and so on.

Financially, the Society is in good shape. It is unlikely that we will have a profit this year given our maintenance spending, but we should be close to a break-even situation by year-end.

The new metered water rates seem to be working well and should provide the Society with about as much revenue as did the old flat-rate system.

Several other items of a routine nature were discussed at the meeting, some of which will be addressed in future posts to this space.

The meeting was followed by a potluck supper.