living for the health of it airs every tuesday on c h o i want to one point seven f m been to jail for living for the health of it doing the best you can with what you got from where you are the first tuesday of every month if cannabis conversation issues around the choice to use cannabis join us on choose dates from two to four on one to one point seven f m great here where you are now living for the health of it why the health not good morning welcome to changes the program on sustainability i'm susan gregory the coordinating producer of the show and with me this morning in the studio is marjorie stewart once again good morning marjorie  guest i'd like to introduce judy who is the manager of water protection and watershed protection projects for the regional district you'd better fix a long title but i can i can clarify  i'm the drinking water and watershed protection wramc ordinator with the regional district and i'm not so judy has the answer to a lot of the questions the practical questions that pop up for people and we get frustrated sometimes and we get irritated and we want to know who's responsible why isn't this so now we know that there actually is a person at the regional district who is working on all these issues that we're so suddenly concerned about due to the weather conditions so maybe that's that's a place to begin julie is when did they are d n start to get serious about paying attention to water conservation this year right so you know it's easy to say it's that problem that this year we're facing for the first time and it's kind of you know something that's right in our face this year but i think from our perspective at the r d and it's been a long view we've had team water smart which is our outreach and education program in place since two thousand and five and actually since two thousand and nine we started our drinking water and watershed protection program which was enabled by referendum of fat people in the region that says you know what we want to have a service that provides us with more information data more understanding on our water resources in the region so we can then make better decisions and so part of this is the public education and awareness piece part of it's the data collection the monitoring and then the third part would be wrapping both of those elements into our planning and our policy so since two thousand and nine we've had this sort of long view of saying you know we need to learn more about our water resources be more adaptive more efficient and and have more public communication public involvement with coming up with the solutions and so this year you know in the context of this longer program i would say that you know in may it really you know was very very evident that we were in for a kind of a different spring and summer period than w normally see we normally see the drought the dry spell kicking in you know july august september and then october we get our rates but this year in made it was sad basically seventy five percent drier actually going ne april and back to march so in that three month period environment canada reported that a seventy five percent drier than the thirty year normal and what we saw from the regional district side of things with the eight small water systems that we operate was that water consumption in the month of may just skyrocketed people were seeing that it was warm and dry and they wanted to you know immediately start watering their gardens and the level of water demand this maine was higher than it normally is in july and still dry consistently still really hot and lots of evaporation going on and lots of demand still with level three bats went into early july we initiated a level four which is that comprehensive water and back well let's just look at the extent of the area of the r v and for a moment it stretches from baby to nearly lady smith yeah that's pretty much it so deep in the north down to yellow point area just prior to that the border with lady smith there will be the overlapping responsibilities between the municipalities and the region in fact i remember when the regional district was invented i was already here and it was invented in order to bring together th organized as they were called sections of the area and to fill in the gaps between the organized particularly the the cities they were going to assist areas of the region so it must be really quite difficult to manage to very strong views well it's interesting in our region of course there's the more urbanized areas like city of and imo for an example where at that whole community is on city water there's a lot of infrastructure involved you know there's two very large in the upper watershed storing that water you know there's a new treatment plant that's being built right now and then there's the infrastructure of piping and distributing that to the whole population in the urban area of the city of and imo and so each of the municipalities in our region so city and i'm all parksville as phone call can be each each operate their own community water system and so you know you'll know if you're a customer of those systems that that's where you get your water bill from the r t and like you're saying you know we  managed which are the unincorporated areas which are now called the electoral areas in the region and we manage eight small water systems in some of those rural areas the largest one is our new spin in water service of our smaller systems that the r d n operates and then the there's improvement districts as well those areas would be covered by community water otherwise you'd be on your own private well the private wells come from a variety of different sources to  depths of water and different kinds of sourcing of water so well sure i mean private wells are basically accessing groundwater which is the water that's stored underground in an awkward for when people think of the word aqua for maybe there's some misunderstanding that maybe i can kind of clarify would knock off or as it's not necessarily a lake underground that's what some people think it's not only going to ground what it is it's a unit that stores water below ground so below the soil surface you go deeper than not and it can be either and to make it simple it can be either a bedrock awkward for or a sand and gravel offer for kind of a simple explanation of it and if it's a bedrock offer water stored within the fractures in the rock and  it's inconsistent it's not like there's this homogenous sort of fracture system in the rock you know some areas may have more fractures than others some of these fractures could be wider and yield more water you know so that's one way to access water underground to drill a well into bedrock and access those fractures and that's how groundwater would come into your well and how you would access that source now sand and gravel offers similar it's just a unit underneath the ground where water is stored after it's infiltrated past the soil matrix deeper down and some of these are shallow wells so people might be accessing a sand and gravel locker for ash you know only only five feet ten feet that sort of thing but more often than not you're seeing you know deeper wells and then accessing sand and gravel off or below a sand and gravel or so you know underground groundwater it's kind of that and kind of this unknown realm right and what we're doing at the region is to try and gather more information on what do we truly have in terms of ground water so monitoring that resource by drilling dedicated observation wells or having private well owners actually volunteer their wells to have data collected to get an understanding of ok where our ground water levels at and of course then there's the provincial monitoring network that's run by the province they can do the analysis and then report back on nav trends over time what we're seeing in terms of groundwater levels and we're all very concerned about overdrawing from hers even if we don't know quite how they work and i've heard a number of people from cedar expressing concern about what they refer to as the cassaday aquifer and there seems to be a certain amount of maybe it's harma maybe it's extra development maybe schenectady with the ny motor systems do you hear any of that at the idea of all this talk about the cuss attack with sure i mean maybe not to the extent that you've described there but i think you know rural residents that rely on offers for their source of drinking water are just inherently concerned with that supply that's where they're getting their domestic water they're their own water managers right whereas in the normal you know you have your water manager you turn on the tap and it's all covered off by someone else and there's this reliable source for you that you pay for but i think rural residents that rely on the aqua for you know that underneath their property for their water are inherently more concerned but i think it's a matter of getting the  correct information so knowing what your water source is what's the true status of it so looking up do we have observation wells in that area can we see that there is a decline or even an increase or is it stable in terms of groundwater levels and then knowing you know realistically what are some of the concerns and i would say that you know while development may be a concern you know more people tapping into a limited resource i would say kind of a bigger concern from our perspective is looking at the natural recharge of that's something that we can't control so that's why it's a little bit more kind of i would say that would be more of a concern when we see things like lack of snowpack when we see change precipitation patterns that can affect actually how much water is getting recharge aquifers it's not this predictable thing where we know you know year after year we're going to get this exact amount of recharging and it's going to be this exact you know exact amount of water we're working with so you know i think it goes hand in hand with being annoying you know it's unpredictable how much water are necessarily going to have but that when we do develop in our communities we're doing it in a smart way to say you know we understand that it's unpredictable how much water we may have so we want to be smart about maintaining our recharge i think now when you talk about great church they have each person like myself is going to think oh good it's it's going to come back but water isn't like that i don't think from the little i understand about the planetary water cycle there's only so much water and that's it and it's not likely that any more will be created so there's no point in us keeping trying to find ways of using more of it and i'm thinking about the recent nasa report twenty seven of the major thirty two water rectifier fairs in the world are going past the point of no return but with the point of no return mean it's an interesting question i mean when it comes back to the term sustainability and so you know many people will define it in different ways but essentially it comes down to the fact that we have something that can be accessed for generations to come something that you know our use of that resource won't impact its abundance for generations to come and so groundwater again like i say it's kind of a realm where there's not as much science as we would like in terms of having the information and quantifying exactly what we have and so that's where i think you know precautionary principles kind of and you know an interesting perspective to take on it and that's why i think you know we do go out in terms of trying to raise awareness just where does your water come from even just knowing that first and foremost and then you monitoring the house so maintaining our monitoring program so we can start to see ok if we're seeing declining groundwater levels you know over a ten year period we can trace that potentially to change climate patterns potentially we could trace it to development in more use but overall it's about adapting to that information you know so decisions can be made and things can move forward based on the current information that we have but you know it's really good to continually collect the data collect the information so that we can adapt and maybe change our management strategies once we have better information coming in to some evidence based decision making instead of just jumping to conclusions and that's wrong or repeating what somebody told us that we don't understand where the information came from there is a point to which the renewal process is not a very much interest to people who are alive today or even their children or their grandchildren because just like forests you don't get a fo but immediately renewed and i think it was be the same with water a lot of the water we're using has been around from time immemorial and so if we overuse it and where where we keep on demanding more and more for more and more frequently frivolous uses then we're really kind of digging a hole for ourselves our way there there is a limit that is one of those limit states where reaching sure i would say yeah i would say i mean what we're encouraging is kind of going to your point on frivolous use we're trying to look at ok we have we have water available in our communities and it's a matter of how we use that water and it's a matter of value right and if we value that water from the sense that you know it's rained on top of our mountains and either it's been stored as snow or if the temperature is too warm you know it's rain that man is carried down into our reservoirs in our lakes and then further down our creeks and rivers and then makes its way back out to the sea some of that will actually infiltrate into the ground and of course recharge our aquifers but that water is on the move we get it but it's on the move and it's a matter of story not water right and so the natural storage we were lie on and would be the snowpack but of course we would need cold temperatures for the precipitation that falls in the mountain ranges to actually be stored as snow and other storage you know we rely on is of course our lakes and reservoirs and then thirdly it would be our ground aquifers so we're looking at those three units of storage and if we reliably can have all three them you know we have that water supply stored and available for communities and also it's there for its ecological purpose of course of stream flow and providing aquatic habitat and but then we're also looking at ways to improve our resilience in the sense that if we're not getting that snow pack as storage what other storage mechanisms can we look at exploring in our region to improve our resilience and so that kind of has led us to our rainwater harvesting incentive program we have a rainwater harvesting best practices guidebook and this is all in an effort to say you know there's things we can do in our own backyards to improve our resiliency and actually you know store the winter rains that we do get it's not that we're not getting the winter range you know it's just that our dry season and our warm season is coming in sooner and so if our winters are warmer and we're not getting the snow pack and that's not the the storage of water that will rely on in the early spring into the summer but with harvesting rainwater then people can can actually just collect water that's landing on their roofs and would otherwise go into the gutters and then out into your storm drain and then out into the creek and back into the  f sure yeah it does help to have fast of course that metal roof is generally seen to be the best roof after rainwater collection but you can collect off any roof you have to think about the end use of the water right so if you're using it on vegetable garden and an edible pl have be different than say if you're using it to water ornamentals or something like that and of course possible drinking water is a whole other clean a whole other standard of quality of water but metal roof is of course better and if you have nino the asphalt roof then that can contain herbicides and mosque killers and stuff like that and that will wash away then you know over time it won't be as potent but yes certain types of roof are better than others having what we call a first flush divert or which actually allows the first flush of water from rainfall to be diverted from storage and just run back onto the ground or into your peripheral drains perimeter drains and then collect the next inch of water that falls to kind of flush off any debris that would be on your roof initially but how regional district and i most support rainwater harvesting is that we're offering an incentive program for residents who are looking to install a minimum of a thousand imperial gallons of storage  and that's for installing a cistern and then piping it connecting it to your roof and then that seven hundred fifty dollars rebate courage residence to kind of fact explore that option of collecting rainwater so that's something that could be done to an existing home or when you're building a new home you could build in some ring motorhome harvesting yeah there are a few places in the world where this is a contentious issue because the community wants to regulate the rainwater and they don't want  privately or homeowners connecting their own systems to to collect to collect rainwater they want to look on it in some way as a as a community resource for some reason singapore comes to mind you're actually i believe forbidden to collect your own rainwater your own but a stupid sticker well luckily that's not the case here in the regional director and i'm i guess we've taken the proactive approach of actually working on coming up with best practices  manual that can go along with our incentive program so that homeowners are equipped that they understand that there are certain practices to follow so that the system can be manageable so that the quality of the water can be as best as it can be and of like i said that varies depending on the end you so whether that's your garden water or flushing toilets inside or there's only been five systems that have gone rebate that have been for potable water but that is a possibility if you do have the proper filtration and treatment systems in certainly have some residents in upper limb let's fill above the parkway who are running into problems because as i understand the deeper you have to drill for water the more likely you are to hit on some some water deep deep  when when you put that together with the statistic that only three percent of purified municipal water is a trip ingested by human beings through kitchen or drinking use so the question on the island and of course again it's that precautionary principle right you better safe than sorry and so i think that's been the sort of over time that's been the way that water's been managed it's like the cleaner safer it is and then you know i guess this myth of a well right so you know we have so much water let's just treat it all and then you know no matter where the water is in our house it's going to be safe which you know that's valid but you do see in other areas such as california and stuff like that where the plumbing codes evolving to have piping system where you have your grey water so that's the water that doesn't need to be treated to a drink of a standard but it's different from black water in the sense that black water is contaminated with pathogens and be like what's coming out of your wrath room right and even kitchen sink because you could be you know washing with that washing off oil and grease and and you know different potential precious contaminants yeah and so that would not be considered gray water that's black water whereas grey water just to make that distinction would be water that's been almost you could say lightly used so for an example when you're in the shower if you're using bio degradable soaps have that water still you know clean enough that you could really use it technically to say flush your toilet and they're getting a second use out of it more or even in california they would plumb that outside to do drip irrigation or something like that same with laundry water shower water that's considered to be gray water what where i sink water and of course toilet on hers considered  r but when you think about water use within the home say thirty percent of your indoor water use is from toilets and then the other twenty five roughly thirty depending on the house would be showers and washing how many teenagers  and so you know it kind of makes sense if we're reducing our shower water which is kind of an rough equivalent to what we'd be using for toilet flushing then that's sort of like a technological fix or a kind of a structural improvements to say within our homes if are being that much more efficient with water that's a really neat solution and i really like the idea of individual piping and i understand that because we've we've been in this system whereby we purify all the water so all the water is safe then it becomes really expensive to change that and to have one set of pipes to deal with the great water that you can do more things with another set of pipes to do with the black water that you have to handle differently but it does seem really just to see this is this is why people are not truly frustrated when they see their neighbors using purified water to wash cars with the water was not purified for cars and i say yeah and i can point back to you watering restrictions that came into into place for the r d n eight water systems at the start of july and at the same watering ban was in effect in parksville as well so parks will and a new set of the largest already and operated water system rely on ground water community wells for their communities but they also have englishman river water during the summer months and so essentially what we were seeing by the start of july was the fact that with such an early onset of the hot dry weather and such a spike in demand and the fact that we weren't getting a lot of improvement in terms of voluntary compliance you know we weren't necessarily seeing people voluntarily you know turning off their lawn irrigation or voluntarily stopping power washing their driveways right and so you know from a perspective of ok we have to last through this stretch that we're not sure how long it's going to go on for but there are forecasts are saying you know we're not going to get significant rainfall that's what we need is significant rainfall in till october even after november right and so from that perspective in early july regional district and i'm most well the city of parks will initiate at our level for water impact and that bans washing your cars surfaces and it bans lawn irrigation what you can still do is hand water vegetables flowers trees and shrubs and the better off from the bucket watering at the roots anyway i'm sure sure and drip irrigation is also allowed so so basically where i'm going with this is once we initiated that watering ban in parks bill and the systems at the start of july what we saw in the intervening week so it's been i think five six weeks would have that we have enforcement ability when we say ok it's a watering down if you have a green lawn then you can get a ticket and what we saw was forty percent drop in water consumption in terms of comparing pre watering ban to post water and ban in parksville and in the news where there is even more room for improvement we saw fifty percent drop in water consumption comparing prior to the water in bad getting initiated and looking at the period after those restrictions came into place and so to us that's a very illustrate of bad a lot of the water that we have the infrastructure to store and clean and pipe and distribute to our customers a lot of that water to the summer is going on too long as it's going on to driveways and  and cars and so it's been really illustrated fresh this summer there's a first time we had to initiate a watering down of this sort because our our supply was so stressed due to the lack of snow and spring precipitation will the do that the delivery is so efficient th all getting so fascinated him yes it's a fantastic conversation and we'll be back to it in just a couple of minutes but meanwhile we'll remind you that you're listening to c h l why when a one point seven f m or c h l y dot ca your listeners supported campus and community station podcasts of our shows are gradually appearing at c h l why dot ca slash changes right now you'll see the show from two weeks ago with guy you don't see but you can click on next in the bottom corner you'll see a black rectangle there and just click on up next in the bottom corner to go to other episodes there are several librarians on the radio episodes there and some other things as well now a couple of events energy solutions for vancouver island is having its annual general meeting later this week they currently have over a dozen people meeting regularly with the goal of increasing the amount of locally produced clean energy such as solar panels installed on public buildings as well as home energy systems the cost of solar panels which i hope everyone realizes is decreasing in credibly all the time and they're not the only solution so things are moving very rapidly towards much more clean energy being able to be produced now at this is a g m the featured speaker will be steven toward off of energy canvas who designs builds and operates renewable energy systems in london england and in vancouver he holds degrees in renewable energy engineering solar  cell hybrid systems and entrepreneurship as well as civil and structural technology from d c i t his renewable energy experience over the last fifteen years has been in utilit wind and solar projects as well as project development of hybrid renewables and left to do what those are actually and energy storage which is something that people get concerned about when they start talking about renewable so this is the guy to ask and his talk and the s v i a g m will take place this thursday august twenty seventh seven pm at brecon united church which is at nine hundred ninety eight s  road and imo just at the corner of brecken road where you turn down to go to the ferry the event is free and open to the public which is why we're announcing it here they say that you don't need to worry about being cornered to join the board because there are already enough willing volunteers fear of the a g m yes yes that keeps too many people away for of a g s but you don't need to worry in this case unless of course you want to join the board in which case i'm sure you'd be most welcome but not to worry just go to hear the talk and find out more about what's happening and for more information on e s p i or to become a member you can see triple w dot v i dot ca and once again that stands for energy solutions for vancouver island and something else that i just learned about this morning the we love local or wards two thousand and fifteen are happening right now this is something b c why and you cannot be your favorite farmer's market local food advocate local brewery winery cheese maker chef or restaurant or bakery that features local food local florist or nursery a local food truck greenhouse vegetable grower orchard meat or poultry producer seafood supplier you pick farm local sweet treats or a store where you can buy local isn't that interesting though there are all of those categories nominations open until september sixth and then you can go back and vote between september seventh and twelfth and i think there's a winner in each of those categories that the i listed off their winners will be announced on september fifteenth and you as the person nominating and voting for your local b c favorites are automatically going to be entered into a weekly draw to you get one hundred dollars worth of b c why which is wonderful but syria at least you're entered into a draw off to be eligible for that and you'll also be entered in the delicious grand prize draw for a luxury as three night stay at taco resort and marina on quadrille island which includes your choice of a cooking course for two sue for more information and to participate you can go to triple w dot knelt the way they put it it's not really we love will call it's we heart local because you can do a heart symbol in letters so it's tripled of you don't we heart local or wards dot c a and you can actually check there to see who has already been nominated so there are regions of b c as well where these nominations are coming from there been about one hundred thirty five so far i think so again that's tripled we heart local awards dot  ca is this coming out of a particular ministry or at the whole b c provincial government i have no idea actually i guess we should go back to that website and find out what is actually sponsoring once they figure out how to spell right back into that the subjects that we were dealing with one of them the twee we didn't delve into is the question of why that would be different levels of water restrictions throughout the region a good question and i know that there was some confusion prompted by kind of the different water purveyors instigating different watering restrictions had different times throughout the summer so it all traces back to the fact that the different community water purveyors have and each of those systems have their different nuances and not sort of dictates what they do in terms of managing their supply and implementing restrictions so for example city of and imo where their water source essentially the way that it's described is that you know if they're if the reservoir was full that jump late and there was no ring for a year that would essentially be a year supply and the other component there is that  we looked at our water system for the englishman ever and also the ground water system that supplies those areas and we looked at groundwater levels there about a month and a half advance so lower than where they normally are at that time and same with our lake levels up at aerosmith lake and that would contribute to the englishman liver which like i said is part of the water supply in the summertime for that area those systems are seeing more stress in terms of their smaller storage area arrowsmith lake as that compares to jump lake for the city of denial so smaller stores first off and then comes back to demand so the city of minimal residents were responding really well to voluntary conservation measures so that means a lot of the residents in the city of new  were even though warm water and was not outright banned what they are seeing in terms of water production is that is fifteen percent lower than what it normally was in the summertime so people will voluntarily reducing their water u even though they still are permitted to water lawns twice a week in a lot of cases people were just saying you know it's not not worth it we're going to not water this year where has in new sand parksville on our level three conservation novel which still permits law watering just on even and odd days for an hour at a time we didn't see that same reduction in water use we needed to see more more if our water supply was going to be basically maintained through a long drought that was forecasted and so that's what prompted the parksville and the new c r t end systems to go into a comprehensive water in baton has cuz we have i guess we'll say again we don't have as much supply so small a reservoir it collect that water and we didn't see the voluntary conservation that most off so that's one contrast where you can see the sea even and who's got the infrastructure they've got the storage and they also have the uptake in the community to take it upon themselves to reduce water consumption whereas in parks on plus of a supply in terms of storage availability as well as you know we saw that high demand now you know you look to qualcomm beach and people will say you know why don't they have any water restrictions and essentially you know you are just simply not permitted to water between seven am and seven pm and essentially that's one way of managing their system is working out really well for them what qualcomm beach does is they actually rest one of their community well it's all throughout the winter they don't use that community well field for the whole winter season and that gives that particular well field so they have a well field at berwick and one down closer to the little qualcomm river and resting one of those well fields gives that opportunity for that prefer to basically recharge and not be stressed or at the whole winter period and then when it comes around to summer they have that additional supply to bring on line and basically by separating the indoor and the outdoor water use so if you're not allowed to water outdoors between seven am and seven pm the national strictly indoor water use for that half of the day and then the other half of the day when you're sleeping that's when people's automatic irrigation systems will be coming on less evaporation in the in the night time and all of that so that seems to work for the qualcomm beach system and so it kind of comes back to each system manages their own restrictions based on the kind of advantages and disadvantages of their own supply systems now with being said i think there's a lot of room for improvement in terms of concerted communications to kind of decrease the key the confusion levels act region when the watering restrictions came into effect and so because it was unprecedented that we actually went into a level for comprehensive water and passion you know we kind of went into it managed it as best we could in terms of getting the word out trying to make the distinctions between the different water systems but upon reflection and for next year we're going to be working basically on putting together a subcommittee of the water purveyors in the different community systems across our region getting together to look and see ok where is there room for streamlining our restrictions our water conservation levels and where is it truly you know making more sense to have those differences and how can we sort of improve our our face of the community in terms of having that concerted message so it's been a learning opportunity but hope that helps to describe a little bit about why have a different water systems have different restrictions i think it down to so lot of questions and the two two aspects that come to mind for me is your your point about community uptake in the city of done imo because community uptake doesn't necessarily mean highly argument urbanised well  sophisticated people and those of us who read and laughed about the residents of rancho santa fe in california will be wondering how the that issue is going to play out because  rancho santa fe is an extremely wealthy residential development and in the valley and too much water was being drawn so the the state us them to use less water and in retaliation those residents who must have in first community have to take started using more water their water use went up by nine percent so the next question was what was going to happen and it's been really interesting to find out because the purveyors of the water who are i believe state purveyors have responded by saying we will put blockers it was discovered that the the grounds of this state of tom selleck were being watered by a landscaping company who were stealing the water from fire hydrants no no and he had to do some immediate damage control but the ultimate threat has to be quite severe for very wealthy water hugs i would imagine and i imagine in the last resort they would move and leave the water alone right i think that's what it comes back to community education and building awareness and building sort of a cultural norm or a kind of this social acceptance of of how do we value water and how do we treat water and use water within our communities and you really going to get so far with you know pricing mechanisms which can be improved and when you do see when you know metered water comes into effect which is all across the region and has been for a while metered water means you know you pay for what you use and not to certain extent really does help bring water you step when people know that the more they use the more they're going to pay but that only goes so far and that sort of pricing mechanism needs to be  kind of in hand in hand with sort of that social and behavioral outreach and awareness building it's sort of accepting the fact that this is where water comes from yes it is limited in supply due to climate due to natural storage limitations on the island and you know this is what we can do to be more efficient and if people really take that to heart and start looking it has kind of the cultural or social norm within our region and what we do here on the island in this region is we conserve water we value it we want to be efficient with it and if that's internalized and accepted by our residents then i think that's going to go off further than looking at more of that the hammer style style which is you know the pricing and in california the litigation and all that stuff so that's what we're doing as a drinking water and watershed protection program is we're looking at water across our region and stuff trying to raise public awareness so where does our water come from you know what can we do to be smarter with our water but also building the science so that we have the data we have the monitoring programs in place so that we're well informed when we are going to the public and raising this awareness and then as i mentioned earlier in the show bringing that public education and awareness the science and the data collection wrapping that into forward planning and our policy so that we can basically look at having sustainable water within our reach and i'm interested in the in the main question because clearly the that is  an important management question and i imagine after a period of time once people get used to the way that that water quantity is is is metered they start to rearrange their priorities and maybe if they have a high priority for washing their car then they're going to be prepared to pay more for the water so what do you think if a parent with a really recalcitrant to nature put a water metered shower system like this is how many gallons of water are used and that's how many swimming pools that fill or how many no thirsty children in the developing country that could have provided water for like providing the context for that like i say i think that comes back to the education and awareness piece and it's not just sticking a price tag on it because our water is so much more than just a commodity that we can you know put a price tag on it's it's got spiritual value cultural value you know of course environmental value of course it's that you know backbone for our communities and our economy and so i think you know that true value of water and a cultural shift towards really understanding what it means to respect and be efficient with that resource is going to ultimately be more successful than say you know charging more and that sort of thing and it's it's kind of a catch twenty two and people have been you know quick to identify it and and it and it is true is that you know when we when we see the price tag for water go out and people start using last but then you know people who are actually conserving water alternately you know the price of water will go up and so people will be conserving water to save money but then to pay for that infrastructure maintenance if everyone's using less and we're not getting enough revenues to maintain the infrastructure then the price will have to go up and so that's why you know it's not just about save water save money if we had that message as our only nugget to put out to the community then there'd be that inconsistency of saying you know when you're saving water saving money in some respects yes absolutely are going to save money but i think and i'll come back to this point it's just that inherent value of water beyond money you know the cultural value the spiritual value the the the fact that our communities thrive on the fact that we have fresh water you know the ecosystems the rivers that run through our communities you know our quality of life and so once people start to say hey you know what water is so important and we're getting it for cheap from our community systems then it'll be a last about what i'm trying to cut back on my water bill but that will still be part of it but it will be like the more on the fact that hey when i use less water in my sprinkling system or i don't leave my tap running then there's more water in the rivers for fish you know then there's more water for generations to come where we might not see the same rainfall patterns that we've enjoyed in previous decades and so that's sort of the big picture message about valuing water that we're hoping to get out there the whole question of of running and said no here is the little cup and that's what you just having that kind of information out there so that you don't suddenly find yourself standing waiting for the motor to come on the water is gushing gushing and more than the truly you probably have some information about the amount of water that can be lost through a simple dripping tap or a small leak unless the system right just a pinhole in your hose  even just a small drip in the back of your toilet you know it can go through gallons and gallons of water like we've seen water bills come in you know it's orbiting amounts you know five grand for their summer bill and it came back to just leaks in the  constantly just this very slow drip in even though they are a geisha and system was in talk on that water was still passing through the system going through that meter infiltrating and leaking back into the ground but that was something that you know didn't get caught and so part of the water efficiency and water conservation messaging is you know being aware of your your infrastructure in your house and your plumbing in knowing that you know an inspection every so often where you just go around and have a  clues to see you know is there anything a little bit off here and catch that and so green patch sure you have a saw on the side right so yeah so efficiency can come to be you know the proactive stuff like putting in a rain barrel to collect rain water and it can be you know replacing your appliances to be a more efficient technology or it can be you know real and scraping so that you don't require an irrigated area to still have that beautiful ornamental garden because there's you know drought toleran species and different landscaping alternatives that don't need need to be irrigated so those are some of the fixes but then it comes back to even the simple things like checking for a leak i really like the monitoring services too because we were enormously  i'm i really like the notion of monitoring i think that's one of the big issues of our time is that we need to pay more attention to monitoring we need to be most supportive of it and we need to recognise that it costs us a bit of money those of us who remember the walkerton saw that it was through inability a whole series of catastrophic decisions sloppy decisions it was through inability to effectively tell us about how that where it's great so the marching that you're speaking of i guess to me and i would phrase that as it's like our operational monitoring so monitoring the actual operation of our water systems to see where are there leaks in the system you know what is the water quality where that's being monitored if you know throughout the day every day constantly kept tabs on the operational monitoring but then there's when you zoom out of it you look at the fact that yes there's water systems distributing community water in our region but it's all coming from the landscape and you kind of zoom out from these community boundaries and you look in you see you know we have watersheds and what's a watershed well it's basically an area of land that water precipitation falls on and it conveys that water and it's  water moving downhill so essentially our watersheds on the island are from mountaintop to sea and it be a drainage basin so basically the topography is dictating where the water's flowing and and i always say when we're teaching kids and we're going  or put your two hands together cut your hands and you look great in the middle between where your two pinky fingers are in the two palms of your hands and you see that line where your two hands join and that's like the river and when you cut your hands and you see where your thumb and your index finger is the top part that's like the mountain peaks and so if a bead of water was to fall in your hands when you have them come up that way he could picture it falling into it watershed where it be to water not to be in this case with a downpour on it would fall into the mountain range and it would drain down towards a river valley that would then convey the water into the lowlands where we live so population of vancouver island we all live along the coastal areas and so when we look at the regional district often in i know it's a series of watershed so areas that collect precipitation and drain it towards the sea and if we can understand ok we're monitoring water in our community systems for drinking water quality for efficiency but we also want to monitor or collect data and information on the health of our watersheds as the source of our drinking water and so you know some of the data that we'd like to collect would be you know ground water information so we partner with the province of b c in doing groundwater monitoring so we're understanding what are the levels of groundwater  also have partnerships to collect more climate information so there's a project in the works to actually collect monitoring information and out of weather station on mt arrowsmith which right now is a big data gap in our region we don't have any upper watershed precipitation or snow pack information in mt arrowsmith which is actually the headwaters for englishman river but also for french creek in the little qualcomm river so working with partners including vi you in the province to put a weather station and actually a snow monitoring station hopefully we do get her snow to have an understanding of what we're seeing in our upper watersheds as we get more precipitation two to three times more precipitation at higher elevations and the knots coming down into the  if we can quantify what we have so precipitation ground water stream flow and water quality in both ground water and surface water and what's the exchange between surface water and ground water if we can quantify all those units that's starting to paint a picture of what we call a water budget within our region if you think of a financial budget it's like you know what's coming in and what's going out same thing with the water budget what's coming in in terms of you know precipitation and also what stored so the groundwater piece the surface water rivers lakes piece and then what's coming out would be the demand side of it and if we can make sure that in our water ships and in our communities we're managing our supply and demand so that the demand is not outstripping the supply then that way we can manage our sustainable water source for region for years to come and so monitoring to come back to your question we want to look at it holistically we're not just monitoring leaks in our system although we are we're looking beyond just our community systems at the health of our watersheds and and community based monitoring is really important to us we only have so many staff at the regional district and imo you know the provincial staff cuts have taken ahead in terms of regional information and so  where we can use citizen science and community based monitoring training stewards in our in our communities to help collect water quality data groundwater information that can help paint the picture and involve the communion build awareness at the same time wrote thousands have lived without love but no one can live without water  so we encourage you to follow up on information from the regional district and imo and now you know how much they have to give us thank you so much julie thanks very much for having me on the show on our website if people want to find more information is w w w dot possibly having to do with democracy this time in light of the upcoming federal election and on behalf of our production team thank you so much for joining us