by Marcel Tetrault
Comox Valley Echo, Friday, April 02, 2010

Cumberland looks set to tap into underground aquifers to access the water required for the village to grow.

Engineer Bob Hoffstrom outlined the village's options for future water supply, which range from raising their existing dams to joining a regional system to accessing aquifers.

Water meters are already being installed, and Hoffstrom said water use should drop by between 40 and 50 per cent once they are all operational and the rate structure has been set.

"That's the best bang for our buck at the moment," said Hoffstrom.

Water meter installation is well ahead of schedule, with most single-family homes already done, said Hoffstrom. Crews will continue to install meters in multifamily and then commercial and industrial properties as long as funds allow.

"The more they can do (per day), the more meters they can put in," said Hoffstrom.

The next cheapest option to increase the amount of water available in the village is to access groundwater sources. Hoffstrom said that two wells have been dug, one by Coal Valley Estates and the other by Trilogy, two of the village's major developers.

Hoffstrom said that initial tests on at least one of those wells indicate that they may be able to get 1,000 gallons of water per minute out of it, enough to supply between 2,000 and 2,500 homes.

The side benefit of a groundwater source is that it might allow the village to satisfy a November 2007 Vancouver Island Health Authority policy for surface water treatment standards without paying for expensive filtration.

"The beauty of this is if there is an event up there (with the dams), now you have a supplementary supply that you can switch over to," said Hoffstrom.

"It's filtered by Mother Nature and typically that water is pretty clean."

But the first item on the village's agenda with respect to water is to reinforce their dams, which are at risk of failing in an earthquake. Under Hoffstrom's proposed schedule, however, that work might not be done until 2016.

Coun. Bronco Moncrief did not like that date, although council has not yet made any decision about when to move forward with dam reinforcement.

"What's to say there isn't going to be an earthquake tomorrow?" asked Moncrief. "Spend it this year and do that job. It's a priority."

Hoffstrom targeted 2012 as the date for construction of a groundwater supply. In 2014, the plan is to install ultraviolet disinfection for the village's water system. In 2016, after a monitoring program has collected water quality data, a decision is to be made about whether or not filtration will also be required.

It is not yet clear whether or not VIHA will accept that plan.

Raising the village's dams is expected to be too costly an option, and might also not provide much additional water as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a right to some of that water for fish flows in nearby fish-bearing streams.

Joining a regional water system might be a long-term option, but in the short- to medium-term other measures must be taken, said Hoffstrom.


© Comox Valley Echo 2010