INSIDE

Dollar pushes up water cost

By Meg Olson

The Point Roberts water district will be reviewing rates to see if they need to follow the Canadian dollar up.

“Is the dollar killing us?” district commission chair Madeleine Anderson asked district manager Dan Bourks at their November 8 meeting. “Are we going to have to raise our rates?”

Bourks said that as they work on the following year’s budget they’ll need to work in rising water costs, attached to both a stronger Canadian dollar and proposed increases from the Greater Vancouver Water District that supplies the Point with water. “We need to evaluate more for next year,” he said. “Last year we went at par.”

In other district business Bourks suggested they hire a consultant to help the district meet a state water efficiency rule that needs to be put before the public for comment by February 2008. “We now have to track our leakage and our water use and set goals to use water efficiently,” Bourks said, recently returned from a workshop on implementing the new rules. “We’re complying with pretty much seven/eighths of it.”

The district will need to schedule a public meeting before the end of January and gather public input on leakage standards and present five conservation measures to help users conserve water. Leakage standards will be a challenge to the district, Bourks said, because of increasing water main breaks due to aging infrastructure. District records show water loss in 2005 at 10.3 percent, dropping to 7.1 percent in 2006 but then rising again this year to 10.5 percent. “The year’s not over yet,” Bourks said.

Commissioner Bill Meursing asked if the new regulatory burden would slow down the district’s efforts to get its water comprehensive plan approved by the state, the first step towards being able to issue more water connections. “Possibly,” Bourks answered. While state engineers had not specifically asked for the water efficiency measures to be included in a requested revision to the comprehensive plan, he understood they were meant to be a part of every district’s plan. “What if it gets kicked back again? We might as well do it now. We have so many items we’re looking at here, we have to set priorities,” he said.

“It’s important to get that comprehensive plan totally approved so we can do something!” Meursing said.

New commissioner Scott Hackleman suggested if staff could draft the water efficiency goals and standards and include them in the new plan, state engineers might accept later introduction of public testimony. “We had wanted to get the comprehensive plan done by the end of the year,” he said.

The next step will be to finalize a contract with local developers to share in the cost of building additional storage capacity for the district in exchange for some of the water connections that added capacity makes possible. Bourks said district legal staff had prepared an agreement, but he was concerned the three developers on board – Stanton Northwest, the marina and the golf course – wanted too many connections for their participation. “Between the three of them they want 800 connections and the tank will only serve 1,000,” he said.