Comox Valley Ratepayer's Association is getting started

The Comox Valley Ratepayers' Association web site is now up

and running and ready to use! 

comoxvalleyratepayers.com

This association is about getting more value for the taxes and rates of our local governments.  Check it out.

There will be more topics on this blog for a while - Sewer Service & Ratepayers Association

Update:  The comoxvalleyratepayers.com is up and running I am putting all my time there.  Water is a hot topic in the valley and will get a lot of attention.
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The name of this Blog states its primary purpose Comox Valley Water Facts.  I have neglected it for a year or so but do plan to do some more posting.  Most of the problems I was trying to fix are still outstanding. We are paying far too much for our water and sewer, yet the RD tells us we must save up for major capital projects.  Our water and sewer use has kept steady or even fallen in spite of our population growth.  

I will be posting some info about Comox Valley Sewerage since I don't have a Blog for that.  So I will use this one for now.  The two are related since all indoor water use goes to the sewer so the sewer flow is a good measure of indoor water usage.

I am part of a small group that is setting up a Comox Valley Ratepayers Association.  We would like to have a web page for that but takes time and money to set up.  We will use this as a way to provide some information to those interested in CVRPA and to get email addresses to keep them informed.  

If you want to keep up with this site, please fill in the Follow by Email form.  If you do, then you will get an email update on days that something new is on the site.

Richard.Hallett@Gmail.com

Bulk Water rates for 2012 and 2013 and sneaking in the Deep Water Intake

Some earlier decisions should be reconsidered.

No approval or serious discussion has taken place at the Water Committee about the Deep Water Intake.  While it would provide some benefits the cost is a huge concern.  The DWI is a key part of the RWS.  Yet financing the DWI was put into the document supporting the increase in bulk rates that were approved last year.

I had made a presentation to the Water Committee year to reduce the bulk rate by removing the conservation funding of 12 cents/m3 and to not increase rates for 2012 & 2013.   I was very disappointed when it got approved and felt let down by the directors.  

Here are some quotes from the Staff Report supporting the increase in Bulk Water rates for 2012 and 2013.

In addition to capital works, the service has also implemented the Comox Valley WEP with a goal to
reduce water consumption over the next several years. Water consumption is projected to decrease by approximately 15 percent by the year 2014, resulting in a reduction in revenues for the service.
Again, this will result in a need to increase the bulk water rate to ensure there is sufficient revenue to cover the total service costs.

Although the service could be funded for some time with the existing bulk water rate, it is
recommended that the rate be increased gradually over several years rather than implementing a large increase in the year it is required.

...

Total costs for the above projects are significant with the deep water intake project contributing to
two thirds of the total capital required. Considering the capital projects and water use projections
listed above, the following Table No. 4 shows the debt charges projected for the CVWS and how
these charges change year over year as capital works are completed. It can be seen that debt charges
almost double over the next seven years.

Water Committee approved it with only Jangula opposed.  Phelps, Presley, Ives and Fletcher were in favour.

Board approval was unanimous.  When Larry saw how the other Courtenay directors were voting he didn't lift his hand.

Water Committee Voting Weights

------------ update --------------
This is a closed issue but I leave it here to point out that the WC wasted money on lawyers dealing with a topic that could have easily been resolved.  They just didn't want to admit that they had been doing in wrong for more than 10 years.
----------- earlier post follows ------------
This topic will be coming up at the Jan. 24, 2012 meeting of the Water Committee [agenda here].  Debra Oakman the CAO is recommending that the issue be referred to the Supreme Court of BC.  I think that spending more money on lawyers is not sensible.  More consideration should be made to my interpretation.

Here are some documents to explain the voting issue:

• emails of trying to get the CVRD to apply correct weights [here]
• Voting weight history from 1994 study, to Letters Patent and as applied by CVRD [here]
• PowerPoint presentation to the City of Courtenay urging them to demand proper voting weights at the Water Committee [here].
• What I feel the weights should have been for past years [here]  

Facts about the Comox Valley Water Service

This started as a letter to the editor in response to Paul Ives’ letter in the Comox Valley Record last week[1].  It is more about trying to get the truth rather than the (Regional District) propaganda leading to decisions about our water usage and pricing.  I can back up everything I say with documentation but that doesn’t work well in a letter.  I will post this letter with all the proof on my Blog which you can find at comoxvalleywaterfacts.blogspot.com

There is not, and never has been in recent years, a water shortage in the Courtenay/Comox area.  We have a great source of abundant clean water and an arrangement with BC Hydro[2] that delivers the water at a very minimal cost. 

To sell the concept of Universal Water Metering, the Regional District staff used incorrect and misleading statements and advertisements to make it look as if we did have a problem[3].  Every time I pointed out a flaw in their numbers[4], they came up with a new justification of the 27% reduction in our water use.  The RD still wants to cut our usage by another 9%[5].   

I made a presentation (Echo coverage[6], Record coverage[7]) to the Water Committee in May showing how they had been tricked into approving expensive water conversion measures.  The presentation gave examples of the incorrect statements.  It also pointed that our original target was to get our residential use to the BC average of 490 litres per capita per day[8].   

At that meeting, Mayor Ives said he did not believe my data.  If you divide the Comox water consumption in 2010 by its population and by 365 you would get 472 l/c/d as the total usage rate.  Even that is below 490.  The Comox residential water use is 79% of that – only 372 l/c/d.  Courtenay’s residential usage rate is even lower at 358 l/c/d.  Details are in the Blog.

 In 2003 we had an application in to the ministry to more than double our water licence limit.  In 2009 RD staff let that application lapse saying that they wanted to wait until the Regional Water Strategy was complete.  That being the case it is totally inappropriate for the RD to use our water licence as justification for water restrictions.

Bulk water rates have increased by 81% since 2006[9] and this has been passed on to our water bills.  There was no need for the spending on water conservation.    I heard that people are filling their rain barrels with their hoses.  What is the point of that?

Just giving out water meters won’t even save water (which I repeat we don’t need to do) any more than giving people bathroom scales will reduce their weight.  To have any impact there must be rewards and penalties. 

If the goal is to have those that use more water pay more, you cannot do that if only some of the users are on meters as is the case in Comox.   A voluntary metering system will not achieve that goal since the heavy users will opt out. 

Comox has a problem.  Many metered users are expecting lower water bills yet the Town’s water costs will stay the same and will actually increase due to costs associated with meter reading and maintenance and with the bulk rate increase that was recently approved by the Comox directors at the Regional District.

The Comox grant that Ives referred to, about $450,000 from the RD that was used to partially fund their metering so far, is only 60% of the $750,000 the citizens paid extra towards conservation.    

A staff report, in Dec. 2009, said the cost to totally meter Comox would be $10.1M to install and support meters over a 20 year period[10].  According to a 2008 RD staff report, the Universal Water Metering program would have cost $16.1 Million[11] (over 20 years with interest included it would cost $30 million)

I live in Courtenay where the City Council had the good sense to back out of Universal Water Metering.  However they did not have the sense to stop the Regional District from keeping those high bulk water rates that were originally intended for UWM.  Only Jangula voted against that and the future increases that were included in the bylaw.

I end with the title of one of the posts in my Blog:  We have met the water conservation goals: Why do we keep on paying?

Richard Hallett, Ph.D. Mathematics
Courtenay

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[1] http://www.comoxvalleyrecord.com/opinion/133660948.html

[2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SkZiCpG_83tx2U9gnVGPp9FWyZRX9EXIlII8kJWse9s/edit says we can exceed our licence using BC Hydro’s.  We only pay the value of the electricity that they could have generated with the water we use.  That is not much.

[3] https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bw07-cjNDL2dZDhmMWZiNGItYTBjZi00NDUyLTgzNTAtMzkyZThiNTE4OTA1&hl=en_US 

[4] https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bw07-cjNDL2dMmE3MmU2NzgtYTExYi00NjRkLTgwNTctYmUwYWQ2MWJkODY2&hl=en_US Here I pointed out that their assumption of our growth rate was exaggerated.  I even met with RD staff to discuss.  Recent water use proves that I was correct.

[5] http://www.comoxvalleyrd.ca/Agenda_minutes/CVRDCommittees/CVW/17-May-11/20110305_Oakman_staff-report_bulk-water-rate_referredfromboard.pdf Chart #1.

[6] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SkZiCpG_83tx2U9gnVGPp9FWyZRX9EXIlII8kJWse9s/edit

[7] http://www.comoxvalleyrecord.com/news/122267044.html

[8] https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1GVZapqRAXLbyMvRb5OVhMb63XCUzaZMys7T08oaNj1E Don Macrae, then a Courtenay Councilor and an RD director on the Water Committee said that if we could get individual water consumption below 500 litres per capita per day we would not need water meters.

[9] Page 31, report to Council, Donald Janquest, Director of Finance, Dec. 16 meeting, report dated Dec. 10, 2009.

[10] Town of Comox Committee of the Whole Minutes, Dec. 16, 2009.

[11] CVRD staff report dated Feb. 26, 2008, tabled at the Mar. 11 Water Committee meeting.

Conservation money going to RD Water Service rather than coming back to Courtenay and Comox for rate reductions.

-------- update ------------
We are still paying over a $ million per year because of this decision and the lack of action of the current Water Committee to roll this back.  This is where that big reserve is coming from
--------- original post follows -----
On May 31, 2011 the Regional District board passed a bylaw (wording of the bylaw) (minutes of the meeting) to 

• let the Water Service keep the funding that was intended for (unnecessary) water metering 
• increase the bulk water rates for 2012 and 2013 due to the loss of revenue due to projected water conservation.   

Voting to give the funds away rather than roll back the home water rates were the following directors

• Paul Ives - Comox mayor
• Patti Fletcher - Comox
• Greg Phelps - Courtenay mayor
• Murray Presley - Courtenay
• Bruce Jolliffe- Area A
• Jim Gillis - Area B
• Edwin Grieve - Area C

 only Larry Jangula, Courtenay, voted "No".

We need to share our water??

"We need to share our water" is on the back of Comox Valley Regional District truck(s).  We need to share our water - with whom? Is that why we have such severe water restrictions?

The Comox Valley Water Service (function 300) is funded by the Bulk Water rates paid by the users.  About 90% of the funding is from Courtenay and Comox.  The RD staff seem to be cutting our use so we can share it with those projects that lie outside the current water service.  Kensington, Sage Hills and others lust after our water.

I have demonstrated that we do not have a water shortage and we now use less than the average per capita use for BC and Canada (systems under 50,000 users).  For details see other posts on this Blog.

  

The Comox and Electoral Area directors support the Water Restrictions and the Courtenay directors do not.  Let the directors know what you think. 

Richard

Delegation: Call to turn off funding tap for water conservation & CVRD Challenged about 'water facts'

The subject is from the headlines of the newpaper coverage of my delegation to the Water Committee.   The point I was making was that CVRD staff used incorrect and misleading data to trick the WC and the CVRD board to spend lots of our money on unneeded water conservation activities.

Philip Round's (Comox Valley Echo) coverage is [here] and Scott Stanfield's (Comox Valley Record) is [here].  They saw the presentation from different perspectives.  Together they both did a good job.

I want the increase in bulk water rate for water meters, 12 cents per cubic metre, almost a million dollars, removed from the bulk rate.  That would reduce the water cost for Courtenay, Comox and the Electoral Areas.  They should then reduce their local rates or apply it to other local requirements.

The Bylaw not only lets the Regional District keep those funds but also proposed future rate increases to make up for the anticipated loss of their revenue by use using less water.

Update:  In spite of the delegation and the facts presented, the Water Committee supported the bylaw and it was approved by the Board on May 31, 2011.  The only director who opposed it was Larry Jangula.

Richard

We have met the water conservation goals: Why do we keep on paying

The PowerPoint presentation from my delegation to the Water Committee  on May 17, 2011 is [here].

I was trying to convince the Water Committee to not approve a bylaw that would lock in the funding that was targeted for Water Meters and then Water Conservation.  The main point was that they had been tricked into starting that funding by incorrect information provided by the RD.  I have shown, as have others, that we do not have, and never have had, a water problem:

• There is lots of it, too much at some times
• We have the infrastructure to store and deliver it
• We operate within our annual and maximum day licence limits and even are allowed to use more

The written documents that formed part of my presentation to the Water Committee on May 17, 2011 are [here].  They show

• The public and politicians were tricked by Regional District statements and intensive advertising to believe that we used far more water than the rest of BC and Canada.  Their goal was to get approval for Water Meter and Conservation projects.
• That our water use is not excessive, in fact we are more water efficient that the BC average.
• We are operating well within our water licence limits.  Since we are using even less water that in the early 2000's our infrastructure is more than adequate to meet our needs.
• Our water use per capita has reduced substantially over the decade
• We should stop wasting vast sums of money (hundreds of thousands of dollars) on advertising, water barrels etc., water enforcment to force us to use even less water.  
• It is pointless – we are not saving water – it just gets dumped into the ocean.

Comox Valley Water Committee Meeting Tue May 17 2:00

The agenda has been posted.  http://www.comoxvalleyrd.ca/section_rdb/agendas.asp?id=80&collection=6&AgendaType=2&MeetingDate=5/17/2011&MeetingType=35

The attachments for my presentation are there.  I will do a PowerPoint as well. 

Basically what I am saying is that our water use was never excessive when compared with others, and in fact has become very good.There was no need for water meters or water efficiency plans.  It was bad stats/research and propaganda that made it seem true.  However the truth will come out.

Richard