Metro Vancouver is caught in a race between infrastructure improvements on one hand, and population growth and climate change on the other.
This year, Stage 3 water restrictions came into effect on June 8, the earliest ever.
Fortunately, this was not entirely because of dry summers. We are conserving water now as work is done on the Stanley Park Water Supply Tunnel. The tunnel is almost a century old, and the upgraded new system will provide more water.
As of June, our reservoirs remain quite full, thanks to a rainy winter. Unfortunately, the mountain slopes are relatively bare of snow. Snowmelt helps replenish the reservoirs gradually through the summer.
Meanwhile, Metro Vancouver’s growth has slowed, but it will pick up again soon. Our population is expected to expand from a little more than 3.1 million in 2024 to more than 4.1 million by 2051.
As our need for water grows, we face hotter, drier summers, and winters that leave less snow on the high slopes.
Our need to conserve water is, in many ways, a success story. We’ve built a massive system that provides clean, safe water for drinking, cooking, and washing to millions of people. It is so reliable that local and municipal wells keep being taken offline so even more homeowners can connect to the Metro system.
But hotter summers and more people mean steadily increasing demand. Major new infrastructure projects can keep up, but they are not cheap.
Water conservation is everyone’s responsibility. That means it isn’t just about letting a lawn go yellow in the summer (although we should).
It’s also about our cities identifying, and replacing old and leaking pipe systems, and about B.C. and Ottawa supporting the use of water-efficient appliances and industrial processes.
For a growing community, saving water is about saving money.
We all know how much major infrastructure projects cost. The Stanley Park Water Supply Tunnel replacement is a relative bargain, budgeted at just under half a billion dollars.
The more water we conserve, the fewer such megaprojects we’ll need as our region keeps growing.