Corner Brook, Stephenville ask residents to conserve water
CORNER BROOK — The city of Corner Brook uses about 20 million litres of water a day — that’s about 10 million litres less than the capacity that can be handled by the city’s water treatment facility, but council still wants residents to conserve water.
Coun. Vaughn Granter made the request when he presented an information report giving an update on water usage during a recent committee of the whole meeting.
The water treatment plant was put into service in March 2015 and supplies water to the residents of Corner Brook, Massey Drive and Mount Moriah.
It cost $26 million to build the plant and it has an annual operating cost of $1.5 million.
Granter said the plant was designed to treat 30 million litres of water a day at a cost to residents of $100 per million litres (consumable costs).
Since 2015 the city has been able to reduce its demand for water through leak detection, repairs and water conservation.
Granter said there is still work to do to reduce the demand and cost even further.
“Each spring the water treatment plant experiences a spike in demand from residents washing around the exterior of their properties,” said the report.
That includes people washing their driveways and washing snow off their lawns. And the estimated spring demand is in the order of 100 million litres more than the average monthly demand.
Granter noted the city did not have has much snow this year and most of it is already gone.
“We can always do a little more to conserve water,” Mayor Jim Parsons said after the report was presented.
Suggestions to conserve water include keeping a pitcher of water in the refrigerator for drinking rather than running the tap until it is cool enough to drink, installing a low-flow showerhead, only washing full loads of laundry, sweeping debris off lawns and driveways, chopping up snow to help it melt, using a bucket and sponge and trigger nozzle on a hose when washing vehicles and turning off the water while brushing your teeth.
Coun. Bernd Staeben asked if the city has the capacity to also look after supplying water to the town of Steady Brook.
It’s something the two communities are currently exploring and Darren Charters, the director of community, engineering, development and planning, said the city has applied for funding for a feasibility study, but that has not yet been approved.
Corner Brook is not the only community with water conservation on its mind.
The Town of Stephenville’s recreation and wellness division posted on Facebook on Monday asking residents to be water conscious, saying a dry early spring means less water in the town supply.
It also posted a number of graphics on its website and Facebook pages offering some tips about how residents could save water.