Dear Editor,

The Comox Valley has been at Drought Level Four for weeks, but you wouldn鈥檛 know it driving around Courtenay: people power washing their driveways, watering their lawns with abandon, and generally wasting the single most precious resource we have.

Why? Because water restrictions remain negligible, meaningful enforcement is non-existent, and, due to the lack of water metering, residential homeowners who waste water pay exactly the same annual fee as those who install low-flow toilets, don鈥檛 water their lawn, use drip irrigation in their garden, and don鈥檛 spend two hours washing their motorboat out on the street, like a guy in my neighbourhood does every Friday night.

Courtenay spends over $5M a year on bulk water purchases from the CVRD (water operations are the City鈥檚 single biggest operational expense), but this is about more than wasting water鈥檚 impact on property taxes. Our monthly rainfall has been below average almost every month for the last two years, snowpacks are a fraction of their historical average, and Comox Glacier will be completely gone in a few years. 

That means there will be no summer refresh of Comox Lake, and when that happens we will be in serious trouble, unless we address our water usage now. And so far, leadership on this in Courtenay has been non-existent.

John Dacombe

Courtenay