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The Irrigation Industry Association of British Columbia (IIABC) has created an online Landscape Irrigation Scheduling Calculator to help irrigators develop water-efficient irrigation schedules. By entering basic information about climate, landscape types, soil conditions, crop root depth, and irrigation system type and spacing, irrigators can determine the optimum number of days to water, the irrigation run time for each day, and the maximum run time per cycle.

As reported in the October 2005 edition of the AWWA “Journal”, results are in from the second annual State of the Industry survey—a comprehensive evaluation of the water industry's overall health. “The State of the Industry Report 2005: A guide for good health” presents key findings from the survey, which included the responses from more than 1,700 utility personnel, service providers, and other individuals.

In 2004, the City of Williams Lake undertook a major review of its water utility and associated management practices. The resulting documents—the “Williams Lake Water Conservation Plan” and the “Waterworks Bylaw”—identify water management and water conservation strategies that will protect and preserve our valuable water resource well into the future.

As noted in the 5th Edition of “Maximum Performance Testing of Popular Toilet Models”, “virtually all toilet models sold in Canada and the U.S. meet both flush volume and performance requirements of the Canadian Standards Association and the American National Standards Institute/American Society of Mechanical Engineers.” However, “there remains some question as to whether models that meet the minimum certification requirements meet the expectations of the consumer.”

Standard water industry tools—such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and modeling programs—collect and store data that are currently unrelated to time and space. As reported in Authentic intelligence: Automated decision-making through GTSM (AWWA Journal, November 2005), a new tool called geospatial time-series management can help water managers consider anything that moves or changes through time, such as rainfall, reservoir levels, treatment flows, and natural stream flow.

The revised B.C. Water Conservation (Plumbing) Regulation, which took effect September 30th, 2005, requires that all new toilets installed in the areas specified below must be six-litre, low-consumption models.

The Kelowna Joint Water Committee (KJWC) consists of the five major water utilities servicing the City of Kelowna. In 2005, the KJWC recently updated the long-range water-servicing plan for Kelowna that was originally produced in 1995. The comprehensive report explores a number of water-related issues.

The following hints will help both residents and growers assess their watering practices over the last growing season and consider improvements for next year.

A water bailiff was hired for the summer of 2005 to help enforce Peachland’s watering restrictions, and to gain a better understanding of how water is used by both residents and growers. This will help the district make sound water management decisions now and in the future.

The City of Salmon Arm’s WaterWise program manager, Eugene Lalonde, can now say with certainty that “residents favour wise water use.” Findings from in-home water audits conducted during the summer of 2005 show conclusively that residents are becoming more aware of the need for water-use efficiency, and are more prepared to take the necessary steps to achieve it.