Capital Regional District directors have reached a compromise over the supply of piped water to the Juan de Fuca Electoral Area.
“It’s a great thing for me,” said Mike Hicks, the area’s CRD director. Hicks has been battling for years to ensure the Regional Growth Strategy doesn’t block the provision of city water to residents in need in his community.
Currently, the unanimous consent of all 13 municipalities is needed to get any CRD water service in the Juan de Fuca — even when a homeowner’s well has run dry.
Under the revised draft Regional Growth Strategy, unanimous consent would not be required.
“So now if I want to extend water, I just need the majority consent of the regional board, which is doable,” Hicks said. “Before, it was impossible.”
The proposal, endorsed unanimously by the CRD board, allows the provision of water if it is required to address a pressing public health, public safety or environmental issue for existing residential units, or to service agriculture.
Some directors have worried that allowing city water to be piped outside the urban containment boundary into the unincorporated Juan de Fuca Electoral Area would be out of step with Regional Growth Strategy statements about urban containment and could lead to sprawl.
But Hicks said that’s not likely, noting that communities such as East Sooke and Shirley grow by only a few people a year.
It would cost $6 million to run a CRD water line to Shirley “to service a growth of two people a year. … It’s never going to happen. It’s impossible. There will never be a water line to Shirley,” he said.
“I pick up the paper and see we’re looking at an 11-storey tower in Saanich with 148 apartments,” Hicks said. “This is bigger than we would do in the next 100 years out there.”
He has also argued that it’s hypocritical for the CRD to endorse the David Suzuki Foundation’s environmental bill of rights, which includes the right to drink clean water, and then deny certain residents water.
“We don’t supply our own taxpaying residents water and yet we sell our precious potable water to 225 cruise ships with 500,000 tourists on them to make ice cubes for their umbrella drinks,” he said.
Metchosin Coun. Bob Gramigna, an alternate CRD director, said his municipality is proof that public water supply does not necessarily lead to sprawl.
“I would have thought by now that at least there would be some semblance of fairness to the Juan de Fuca area and other areas who want it,” he said.
Highlands Mayor Ken Williams said there is no rationale for providing infrastructure for so few houses.
“I believe in the right to clean water, but not to the right to piped water,” he said.
The Regional Growth Strategy is a vision for the future of the capital region, guiding decisions on regional issues such as transportation, population growth and settlement patterns. The existing strategy is being updated as part of a five-year review process.
All affected local governments must agree to the document before the CRD board can adopt it as a bylaw.
Once the revised plan receives board approval, it will go to public hearing
