Water Conservation - Town of Gibsons

Why Conserve Water?

While our system can adequately meet our daily demands, water conservation is important to for a number of reasons. 

It’s Responsible

We conserve water in order to be responsible stewards of and to raise awareness of a valuable natural asset, i.e. Aquifer 560.

We conserve water as a preventative measure, not necessarily in response to a current shortage of water. Our water source is out of sight and the impacts of increased use are not as evident as with surface water.

To Save Taxpayers Money

Water pipes, reservoirs, pumps and other parts of the Town’s water distribution system must be sized appropriately for the Maximum Daily Demand. What’s that? It is the day or days that have the highest water use, usually during the summer months. If we reduce the Maximum Daily Demand through conservation we also reduce the required size of various components of our water system. If we can use smaller components that cost less, we save money.

As an example, the size of the newest reservoir would have needed to be approximately 50% larger at a cost of around $500,000 if the Town was still using the same amount of water each day that we used in 2008. Thanks to conservation efforts of both the residents and the Town, we dropped our ‘per capita’ usage by more than 50% between 2008 and 2018, including the conservation realized by the installation of water meters. (see chart below.)

The Benefits of Water Meters

Water meters help conserve water by providing an indication of leaks on private systems and also assist us in tracking leaks in the municipal pipe system. Meters also permit property owners to be in charge of the amount of water that they use; users now pay for what they actually consume instead of the lower water users supplementing higher water users.
*Water consumption is calculated by dividing total annual volume from all Residential, Strata and Commercial meters by 365 days, then dividing the daily total by population.

 

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