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Letters: While Bowen dries up, we resurface roads...

Shouldn't municipal dollars be spent on addressing water issues, a reader asks
pouring asphalt
Given some of the expensive issues facing the island, Moira Greaven writes, paving roads should not be a priority.

I realize that there is a budget and schedule for road maintenance. However, in light of the water supply problems, albeit in only a couple of neighbourhoods (so far), spending money to resurface the Deep Bay roads (Melmore, Lenora, Senator) instead of addressing water issues, in the short term and the long term, seems to me not the right priority or wise expenditure of public funds.  

While the Cove Bay Water System supply from Grafton Lake reservoir currently meets the needs of the users, this is not likely to be the case in future scenarios which include increased population and consumption, never mind hotter, drier and longer summers.  This is an island; situations might arise where we might have to share a resource, such as water supply.  Shouldn’t we be proactive and take measures, sooner than later, such as raising the dam on Grafton Lake to increase the storage capacity to the maximum allowable under the existing water licences?  Are the builders or property owners of new homes, or renovated homes and/or upgraded landscapes, being required to install water storage cisterns for water collected from the roof?  Are there financial incentives, and also for homeowners, to do the same? 

Water conservation by residents should be ongoing and not just when the need arises.

The Cove Bay Water System presently allows watering of lawns for a maximum of three days a week (without daily time limits)!  Unless one has one’s own water supply through reuse or collection of rain water, watering of lawns should be discouraged, if not prohibited, during the summer months, even if there is no water shortage. Irrigation systems should work depending on the weather, and not automatically run rain or shine.  Also, irrigation nozzles watering the lawn should be shut off.  

For me, having lived on Lenora for 40 years, the resurfacing of our Deep Bay roads was never a priority and having a hot, black asphalt ribbon running through the neighbourhood has changed it, never mind increasing the runoff (when we have rain!) into ditches that are full of vegetation and now more liable to overflow.  

With climate change and more severe weather events, we need to be more aware, more prepared, and more careful in how we use our water, working all for one and one for all.

Thank you.

 

Moira Greaven