Water-Centric Planning

This article presents the findings of a Malcolm Pirnie Inc. 2004 national survey of 71 water utility industry experts, regarding their views on the future issues facing U.S. utilities. (While the survey was conducted in the U.S., many of the findings reflect the current and potential future states of the water industry in Canada.)

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 Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB) was formed in the mid-seventies to provide a basin-wide perspective on water resource management in the valley. The main focus of the board over the past thirty years has been milfoil management in area lakes and providing grants to local municipalities for sewage treatment infrastructure. Recently, the OBWB has undertaken the most significant change in its thirty-year history.

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.

StormwaterAuthority.org is a resource of comprehensive and relevant information, news, events, and education on stormwater. The website’s mission is to help landowners and developers, engineers, and contractors make educated and environmentally sound decisions about stormwater management and treatment.

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.

While many residents are satisfied with the town’s raw water, others are not and have installed water softeners. These devices may address hardness concerns, but unfortunately, the backwash discharged from the softeners into the sanitary sewer has significantly increased sodium levels in the reclaimed water. This water is used for irrigation at various locations. Elevated sodium levels damage the environment in general and our aquifer in particular, and can detrimentally affect the growth of turf and trees.