ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Gary Holman: Fulford Water Issues

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Gary talks about the significant water issues facing Fulford, and all of Salt Spring. The existing infrastructure is old and prone to signifiant water loss, and replacement is a costly proposition. In addition there increasing demand for water and issues about sustainability from Salt Spring's water sources

Welcome to the Cheer.fm podcast, Ask Salt Spring Answered. After many Ask Salt Spring events, we sit down in our studio with Gail Baker's guest and review some of the key points discussed. Welcome to episode one, where our president Damien Inwood sat down with Gary Holman to discuss the significant water issues facing Fulford. So I'm sitting here with Gary Holman, who is the CRD director, and we've just been listening to the Ask Salt Spring session. Welcome, Gary. Hi, Damien.. Yeah, now you were talking quite a bit about water today and I was interested in what you said about the CRD having five water districts and I think two sewage systems under its control, is that correct? Yeah and by a happy coincidence I guess the Fulford water district was meeting just before the ask session. to ultimately replace their water supply and distribution systems,

which is a considerable cost and of considerable concern to the Commission and, of course, to Fulford Water ratepayers. Did you say that the potential cost was quite high? What would that be? I forget the exact number, but it's in the millions of dollars. If you were to replace their entire water supply, which comes from Weston Lake, and the distribution system to the Fulford Village, it would be in the millions of dollars.

And you're talking, I think there's 108 properties, 95 of which are built on. So, you know, ballpark 100 households that would be responsible for several million dollars to ultimately replace that system. Now, but the strategy, I mean, you don't have to do it all at once. So the strategy is you do it over time, in part because of ability to pay, but also because you want to focus on the parts of the system that are the most vulnerable. There's a whole number of that. That's why you hire a consultant to look at all the factors

that determine how do we tackle this beast. You've got several kilometers of pipe involved. So which ones are most critical to try and replace first? So that was the purpose of the report. Right. Now, I understand from what you said that you know where the leaks are, and they are between 20% and 30 percent of the total amount of water. That seems like an extraordinarily large amount. The 20 or 30 percent that came up in the ask session, I'm not sure exactly where Fulford is in there.

But for Seardie Water Districts and, you know, for that matter, North Salt Spring are by far our single largest water utility. They all have water leak issues because they all have asbestos cement, mostly anyway, distribution and supply lines that are decades old and are leaking. And they're also leaking at the connections, you know, where you connect the household to the distribution system. So each of those water districts have their own systems, their own leakage issues. And in general, the leakage rates range from in the order of 20 to 30 percent. Not exactly sure where Fulford is in there, but even at the low end, it's still considerable.

So really the cost of Salt Spring Island wide to upgrade the water systems here is multiple millions, isn't it? Indeed, especially if you include North Salt Spring. Yes. And where would that money come from? Well, from the ratepayers. Now, there are infrastructure programs, grants available. We've used, like the CRD, is the local government body that receives federal gas tax transfers. So Salt Spring gets about, it's based on a per capita basis. Salt Spring gets about $600,000 a year. So that's grant funding that has been applied to various water districts and our sewage treatment systems. Malaview, for example, the Malaview sewage treatment plant is going to be completely, basically replaced.

We got a separate infrastructure grant for that. So there are infrastructure grants available. Typically, though, they haven't been aimed at distribution systems. They've been aimed at treatment systems. So that's the grant that Malaview got. So that's another possible source of funding. But in large part, it comes back to the ratepayers. And the key problem with respect to CRD water utilities

is the dis economies of scale. They tend to be small systems, and those distribution systems are decades old, and those chickens are starting to come home to roost. So, you know, one approach is just to continue to fix the leaks as they come up. And, you know, I think that's a valid, while it's obviously not ideal and may seem a bit haphazard, it may be that financially that may not be the worst approach that you can take is to simply fix leaks as they come up. And when you fix a leak at a certain spot, maybe you then replace the pipes on either side of that. I'm not an expert, but it's a huge cost. And it was the subject of a consultant's report of the Fulford Water District this morning.

And I think you said that the LCC, the local community commission, is that what? Yes. They will be meeting in June and they now cover water districts, is that correct? No, the opposite. They will take over a number of island-wide services. They won't be taking over area-specific services because the commissions that exist for those services now are essentially elected, in effect, elected by rate payers at their AGMs. So in effect, like the Fulford Water Commission, for example, the commissioners that sit there ratepayers should be ratepayers themselves.

They should live in the area versus an LCC, which is elected at large, which may, by happenstance, happen to be a ratepayer in Fulford or wherever. But for the most part part they wouldn't be and so you've got elected you would have elected officials making decisions for for areas and they're not ratepayers I just didn't think from a governance perspective that was defensible. Okay. So, and I think we talked a little bit about Vortex too and how the Vortex situation complicates the issues for Fulford. Tell me a bit about that.

Yeah, so Vortex has a proposal for a tourism accommodation and, you know, I believe restaurant where the old Fulford Inn site was. So they have received their approvals from the trust. The zoning was already there. They required a development permit from the trust, actually several kinds of development permits. They're next to the Fulford stream and estuary. They're next to the ocean. They've got streams flowing adjacent to or through the property, et cetera, et cetera. So there were several development permit areas that applied to that site.

They've, as I understand it, received trust approval for all of those, so they can move ahead, but they still have remaining issues regarding potable water supply. So there are two choices there. One, they can apply to join the Fulford Water Service area, and the Commission would have to agree to that my understanding is that they are seriously considering that and are likely to come forward with an application to join the service area if they don't join the service area then they have to fall back on groundwater

on like even rainwater catchment you you know, those sorts of things. So at some point, it's my understanding, and I obviously can't speak for the proponent, that they will be making a formal application to join the Fulford Water Service. So there are some... Obviously, there are incremental infrastructure costs that will be triggered by that.

The first and foremost would be connecting the system, which more or less ends at the top of Fulford, the intersection of the Fulford-Ganges Road and Beaver Point Road. They have to extend the pipeline down Beaver Point Road to the Fulford Hill to the Fulford in site to the vortex site and then there may also be and this is where it gets a bit complicated because the consultant did in this report that the Commission was considering this morning the consultant did to a certain extent touch upon the implications of what the what what some incremental infrastructure requirements might be within the system. There's clearly the extension of the system, but even within the system, it may require some additional investments, and the consultant kind of touched on that. that um uh and all of that would would uh ultimately the commission makes the decision about whether vortex can join or not one possibility though is if there are upgrades

required within the existing system you know in addition to connecting that system to the vortex the Vortex site, it may be that the proponent might make a contribution towards some of those costs. So that's not clear at all at this point, but there is that possibility, and that's in part why the consultant touched on that issue. The other issue, of course, though, is the water supply, Weston Lake, whether there is sufficient water in Weston Lake, whether there is sufficient room within the Fulford water license on that lake to serve additional demand.

So not only Vortex, but there are properties between the Vortex site and the Fulford system that may also want to join, which means additional water demand. The Fulford area is not fully built out. I think there's 95 properties connected. There are 108 that are possible, so there's even some development potential within the Fulford service area now. So the commission wants to make sure that they are able to serve them. And then there is, for example, the possibility of suites, which by law 530, I think, in effect,

would legalize suites in Fulford, which is not the case now. So there's some additional demand. So aside from all of the infrastructure requirements, there is the sustainability of the lake itself. We don't want to get into a situation where North Salt Spring is where, in fact, they've had to impose a moratorium on new connections because the water supply isn't sufficient to sustain full build-out, even for properties within their current system. So that includes, for example, Channel Ridge, which has been impacted by the water moratorium and it impacts affordable housing.

We don't want to get into that kind of situation for Weston Lake and the Fulford system. Okay, so when will this be resolved, do you think? Is there a meeting coming up of the local water commission that will look at this report and respond to it? Yeah, so the commission's had a first look. They provided some initial initial comments they want to meet with the consultant and so there was a motion that i believe passed at the uh at the commission i had to leave a little bit early to get to the ask meeting um but they want to meet with the consultant and there was a motion to that effect so there'll be a i believe a virtual meeting with the consultant where the commission will go through the report in finer detail with the consultant who actually did the work. So that would be the next step

there. All the report does is lay out a potential strategy, which the commission may want to amend or revise or whatever. There's no commitment to actually embark on the investment. I mean, the investment is ultimately in the tune of millions of dollars, but the first step is to develop a strategy about how we want to approach that. There are other capital projects underway, planned for Fulford, so they've got a lot on their plate. The Vortex application, that's not clear. That's up to the proponent about when they'd submit. But I would think, and don't hold me to it,

but I would think by the end of this year, we're going to be much clearer about the vortex proposal and maybe somewhat clearer on the strategy to upgrade, replace the piping systems. Now for those of us who live on wells and aren't part of a water system, would we have to kick in tax money towards these projects or is it purely through the rate payers of the the water commissions themselves yeah the latter yeah it's the it's the 108 properties within the service area and if vortex joins uh there'd be uh you know an additional contributor there um but no it it these are area-specific services, and the responsibility for those assets and liabilities lie with those ratepayers.

Now, just briefly, I know you have to go, but there was discussion about raising the levels of various lakes and things, and the fact that that would lead to compensation for property owners along the banks of them for loss of land and things like that. Is that something that the CRD would be looking at? I don't think we're there yet. The Western Lake study indicated that there is a constraint there in terms of long-term sustainability of the lake. I mean, take into account climate change, like over time, our drought periods are going to be extending longer. So it's certainly come up, excuse me, for St. Mary Lake. And I know North Salt Spring, one of the options they were

considering was raising the level of that lake. The cost of increasing the weir height on the outflow into Duck Lake would be fairly modest. But what it would do, if you raise lake levels, you're in effect taking away property from lakefront property owners. And the compensation for that take uh would be uh considerable we haven't got anywhere near talking about that for western lake i think the first thing for western lake is to determine um what to a determine whether there is a sustainability issue. We've identified that there is. So probably the next decision would be Vortex in or not, and that decision will bear heavily or will be influenced heavily by the commission's view and CRD's view of the sustainability of the lake. If we took Vortex in, it's going to – it's certainly not going to alleviate that problem. It's going to accentuate that problem.

So that will be a decision for the commission to make. But in terms of raising lake levels at Weston, you'd have similar concerns there. In fact, I think we had a lakefront owner attend the ASC meeting raising that issue specifically. If you were going to raise the lake, you would raise compensation issues for the lakefront owners. We haven't got to that point. There's been no discussion of that at this point. And apparently risk of flooding, according to that gentleman too. Okay, Gary, thanks very much for coming in. And apparently risk of flooding, according to that gentleman too. Okay, Gary, thanks very much for coming in. And hopefully we'll make this a regular event after Ask Salt Spring. And we'll be putting this on our website

and possibly a podcast as well. Damien, thanks. And when the local community commission, so the election is May 27th, you may want to have some candidates on here to talk about their views but certainly when they're elected you're going to have an elected body

the CRD director sits on that commission so I think interviews like this involving the commission could be quite useful I think to inform the community about CRD issues. But congratulations on the work you've done so far.

Your fundraising is going well. It is, yeah. And you've got lots of public support, and I'm sure that'll continue. And this station, when you get up and running fully, is going to be a great asset for our community. Thanks, Damien. Well, thanks very much, Gary.