Dear Editor:
There is a water advisory in Summerland. If you haven’t visited the municipal website, you would never know.
Last summer there were no advisory sandwich boards to be found in Summerland. Yet our community had a “water advisory” for 91 days!
Summerland’s Public Works, with the support of the Interior Health Authority, chose a water treatment process which when compared to others, produces the greatest volume of wastewater.
In previous letters, I explained that because of this large volume of wastewater, the treatment capacity had to be reduced; hence more costly future water separation.
The excessive wastewater overwhelmed the filtration of recycled wastewater: hence a future costly new filter.
Public Works made no provision for a disposal site for excess wastewater so now it’s dumped at a site that was supposed to be used in the future as our landfill site.
Health officials do not permit all of the wastewater to be re-cycled, some must be disposed of.
During last summer’s 91 day water advisory, 94 megalitres of wastewater were dumped. That’s 94,000 cubic meters of water.
According to Public Works, the average Summerland home uses a total of 20 cubic meters of water per month.
For three months, an average of 60 cubic meters of water is used.
So during last summer’s hottest 91 days, the equivalent total water consumption of 1,566 homes was dumped, unused.
Public Works has the responsibility to protect and inform our immune weakened citizens, our very young, our very senior, visitors and tourists of health risks.
Lack of advisory signs does not eliminate costly design flaws.
David E. Gregory
Summerland