British Columbia鈥檚 Water Act of 1909 was created at a time when the water supply seemed infinite, when everyone took water for granted. The act has evolved a bit, but more amendments would be tacking patches onto an old blanket. The government鈥檚 Water Sustainability Act, introduced in the legislature last week, is aimed at replacing the outdated Water Act. It鈥檚 long overdue.
Environment Minister Mary Polak says public consultations about the proposed legislation started in 2009, with thousands of British Columbians contributing. The new legislation, if approved, will come into effect in the spring of 2015, after supporting regulations are developed.
One of the deficiencies of the old act was the lack of regulation of groundwater. The province is technically the owner of groundwater, but anyone can take water out of the ground without a licence and without charge. That has allowed Nestl茅 Waters sa国际传媒, the world鈥檚 largest supplier of bottled water, to take about 300 million litres of fresh water a year from a well near Hope without a permit and at no cost for the water itself.
Looking at the big picture, that鈥檚 not a massive amount of water 鈥� the Capital Regional District can use nearly that much on a hot summer day 鈥� but it鈥檚 a big deal to the 6,000 people who depend on that aquifer. The province does not require that a record be kept of the amount of water taken out, nor does it require that extraction of water be geared to the recharge rate of the aquifer. That鈥檚 a significant shortcoming, given that about a quarter of all British Columbians depend on wells for drinking water.
(In Nestl茅鈥檚 defence, it voluntarily reports its water withdrawal to the District of Hope, the only bottled-water company in sa国际传媒 to do so. A spokesman said the company, which has been urging the province to do an inventory of water resources, is willing to pay a fair price for the water.)
Under the new legislation, large-volume users would be required to obtain permits and pay application fees, as well as annual water rentals. Domestic users would be exempt.
Polak said British Columbians are clear they don鈥檛 want the province to sell its water, yet a poll commissioned by the Vancouver Foundation and the sa国际传媒 Real Estate Foundation showed that 90 per cent of the respondents believed fresh water is sa国际传媒鈥檚 most precious resource.
The government is seeking input on water pricing until April 8. Call it selling or call it renting, the fees for the extraction of water should be tied to the volumes involved.
The amount of water does not change. It can be separated into its components 鈥� hydrogen and oxygen 鈥� through electrolysis, but in nature, water is generally not created or destroyed. It flows along riverbeds to the ocean, evaporates into the atmosphere and returns as precipitation in the great hydrological cycle that keeps the planet alive.
But it doesn鈥檛 always return when and where we want it. It is not evenly distributed, geographically or seasonally. And after we have used it or abused it, it is often polluted. It isn鈥檛 enough to have certain quantities of water 鈥� we need to ensure that water is clean, or we face the dilemma of the ancient mariner in Samuel Taylor Coleridge鈥檚 poem: 鈥淲ater, water, everywhere/nor any drop to drink.鈥�
Regardless of regulations, every time we use water, we should be conscious of what happens to it. What goes around comes around.
One way of knowing the true value of water is to run out of it. We shouldn鈥檛 wait for that.
