Re: “B.C. needs to better monitor water consumption,” June 11.
I worked 12 years in long-term monitoring, planning and management of the hydrology and quality of our fresh water. In 1995, the majority of the long-term surface monitoring was stopped as part of cutbacks. Both the federal and B.C. fresh-water management offices were decimated.
Since 2001, much of the provincial and federal environmental legislation, developed from decades of research, has been gutted to eliminate red tape for business development.
In his article, Ben Parfitt is requesting to reinstate the work that we were doing until all the cuts started.
The critical point regarding liquefied natural gas being extracted from the ground is that even during our fully staffed management, we had only one groundwater hydrologist to protect every community’s water supply in the B.C. and Yukon region.
All these new LNG projects, expected to last up to 100 years, have no long-term management of the ground water supplies.
We need a group of groundwater hydrologists and water-quality experts to provide 100 years of monitoring, managing fresh water, especially ground water, to protect several generations to come.
How many hydrologists will the governments provide for long-term management to protect taxpayers’ fresh water community supplies, as well as agricultural, fish and forestry needs?
Otherwise, the billions in profits from LNG could be spent supplying residents with bottled drinking water, as the Mexican government does for its residents.
Susan Rowntree
Victoria
