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Okay Ed, as you state; "the Twonship must reduce our dependency on water wells" exactly but how to is the question and if research is to be followed then meters on wells and intake to homes WILL reduce the demand on water - it is a proven fact! Go with the proof and forget the spoof Ed!
Wink, the township USES the well water and it is disposed of after. The private well owners only BORROW it for a while. Nature then filters it so that you can put it in your scotch for when you write this sort of nonsense.
Ed, Tinkle, I think you should look at the discussion on this subject at other blogs and websites. Or pick up an introductory text on hydrology. The vast majority of water used by well owners is NOT returned to the aquifer, but is lost to transpiration, evaporation, and runoff. Depending on local conditions, the loss can range from around 50% to 100%. Ed, you are arguing from fallacy.
Edited By Siteowner
RC, The falacy is yours. You pick up on the exception rather than the rule.
Regarding expertise on hydrology, I don't need to meet with one because we have one in the family.
Nice try.
Interesting editing choice, editor. Suggests you are more interested in advertising one point of view than engaging people in discussion. Oh well; your field, you make the rules.
Tink, you had better talk to your Hydrologist relative and ask about “evapotranspiration” and confined aquifers. If you use well water to water your grass, the vast majority of it goes into the grass, the upper layers of the soil, or is lost to evaporation. If it was all recycled back to your aquifer, it wouldn’t make your grass green, would it. If you overwater enough that some of it gets down into the deeper soil, then you start losing way more due to runoff and perched water table flow. The water in your septic field does essentially the same thing (notice how green the grass is there?). IF you have a shallow well and live over an unconfined aquifer (Brookswood?) then a higher proportion of the water you use ends up back in the aquifer, but not all of it. Of course, then the soils doesn’t really have the time to “naturally filter” the water, but that’s a discussion for another day. If you have a 100-foot well that taps into an aquifer below a signficiant aquitard, then it is safe to say a very, very small proportion of the water you pump out gets back down in any time of human time scale. Not the exception, but the rule.
Ask your relative to supply you with a Freize and Cherry, or Proges and Hammer, both good intro texts
R C - This Editor does not advertise anything that chooses to not acknowledge the effort. We did try in vain. Do you think perhaps LFP's point of view truth may hurt the vain and threaten the ambitious?
huh?
Whatever. Like I said, Your playing field, you can make the rules.
RC, For some reason or other you have once again taken the side of Mayor Alberts and his committed puppets who depend on everyone but themselves to avoid responsibility. They seem to have no faith in their own abilty for rational thought. You also continue to look at a the well issue by drawing attention to the many facets of the issue that contribute, but also confuse, because of the lesser role that they play in the grand scale of what is at issue here. The issue is that our township well water water is wasted away after 9.5 million gallons per day of it is pumped from the ground. You might impress my inlaw by tossing around a few technical terms, but beyond that your bias evades the obvious error, which is chasing the wrong villain on this issue. I refer to the fact that the township sells that 9.5 million gallons per day from our precious aquifers and their efforts for a solution for aquifer failures is right there looking at them.
Yes, I guess by the age of ten we all learned how water evaperates. We might have even figured out on our own that it does so on a greater scale when used to irrigate farmland. Then a little common sense told us that in doing so it delivers food products to us, rather look for the nearest sewer pipe for escape. Once again this teeny bit of logic illustrates where the township should place their priorities when solving the aquifer problems.
Ed does not say so directly, but in my opinion, the cost for the township to get a tax from well owners should be directed towards getting a bigger bang for the same buck by cutting back on their own usage. I think Kim Richter was the only councilor that looked at the cost for the township in order to collect a few bucks in tax. When they get their own house in order, they can begin looking other large users, and work their way down if it is necessary.
Wait a minute Tinkle. Are you saying farmers should not be accountable for the water they use, because they are supplying food? You have already argued that private well owners shouldn't be accountable (hence, no meters). How about industrial users? They are supplying food, jobs, equipment, etc. Should they be accountable? It seems you think only the municipal supply should be accountable. But remember, that municipal system supplies water to something like 75% of Langley residentes! You are suggesting the 25% on private wells are more important?
Tinkle, RC seems to be a devoted follower of Kurt and his band of shirkers. He should run for office, or try for a staff job, where he could really have influence.
When I first read his post, I thought-gee, because we have 9 or 10 months of searing hot weather here in the Lower Mainland, I better check this out. Sure enough, my septic tank had gone bone dry, and the grasses near the weeping tiles had grown 6 inches overnight. When I looked up, my neighbors pigs were flying too. Yikes!
Yup, this fellow's a genuine professor. He works the fringes of reality, and points to them as though they are major factors in this issue.
I dropped in at the Co-op on Saturday to sign the petition against taxing domestic wells. The lines were sometimes as long as 3 and 4 deep! The moods were angry as well. I hope everyone that signs this petition will keep in mind that the battle is not over, and Kurt and his merry men could still slip this one past us. Right now I believe that this coming November is the only thing causing any hesitation.
RC....you are purely argumentive, as well as biased on the issue.
Langley’s Non existent Water Problem
There really is no crisis in water supply for Langley. There is a crisis in confidence in the leadership of Langley. The past few months have caused unnecessary anxiety as the population has been lead to believe there is a problem with the water supply.
There are a number of good alternatives to augment the water supply in Langley that have been advanced. These include the north shore lakes, Cultus Lake & Harrison Lake. Also more wells can be drilled in Langley. 2 other options have been overlooked. One is to build a desalination plant. The south west corner of Langley is 4 miles from tidewater. Thousands of cities around the world treat seawater to use it for drinking water. The process is simple and the distance to draw the water is close. Many cities draw seawater from much longer distances. Another alternative and probably the best is to draw water from the Fraser River. The Fraser River flows at a rate of 5,000 cubic meters per second. This is a flow rate that in one day can supply all of Langley’s water needs for 25 years. The good thing about the Fraser is the quality of the water. Fish live in the Fraser River. Living fish are always an indicator of good water quality. Needless to say the Fraser has better water than many of Langley’s wells. The fact is that Langley is already drawing water from the Fraser River. Some might be skeptical about this notion but I will explain.
Presently Langley Township pumps water from 17 wells to supply water to 85% of the Langley Township population. 38% of the Langley Township well water comes from the Salmon River well on 88 Ave at the west side of Fort Langley village. This is the best and largest producing well in the Township and far exceeds any of the other wells. It was drilled in the early 70’s and the press reports of the day were that it was a “gusher”. It also has excellent quality characteristics. The Salmon River well is a mere 60 feet deep. This well is actually drawing water from the Fraser River. A quick glance at the geology of north Langley shows that the water bearing material that supplies the Salmon River well is a one mile wide layer of sand that fills a crescent shaped basin that completely surrounds the village of Fort Langley. This crescent shaped basin is directly connected to the Fraser River like a giant pipeline. The Fraser River is also in a sand filled basin. The water travels thru the sand where it is constantly filtered. It is pumped at the well and we drink it. It is excellent water.
Many of the Townships other 17 producing wells were actually drilled in bad locations. They were drilled too close to areas where many private wells were already in existence. This has caused problems for the private wells. This is not a problem in the area surrounding the Salmon River well because it is a flood plain and no one lives on the flood plain. Langley can simply drill a few more wells in the Fort Langley basin and phase out the other wells. Additionally the east and west water systems need to be connected. It is actually quite simple. The interconnect would need to run from 232 St to 248 St. a total distance of 4 miles and Aldergrove would then enjoy the same water quality that is in the west system.
There is a cost to all of this. Recently the Township of Langley was proposing to install meters on all private wells in Langley. At a cost of $10,000 per well (a conservative estimate) that would have been $50 million dollars. The interesting thing about this bizarre metering idea was that after spending the $50 million it would not have produced one drop of water for Township of Langley residents. The above ideas I am advancing will not cost anywhere close to $50 million and they will increase the water supply.
Another good idea would be to take water directly from the Fraser River and treat it. This would be the same process that is being used to treat the lake water from the north shore. The intake pipes could be installed in such a way as to take advantage of the sand filtration under the river. Not a difficult concept.
Langley does not have a water shortage but rather has numerous viable options to choose from.
Thank you
Wally Martin
21628 48 Ave
Langley BC V3A 3M8
sales@princessbb.com
604 533 5569
Wally,
Where to begin....
I’m not sure where you got your “conservative” cost of $10,000 per well to install meters but you may want to look again. While it may cost $10,000 to put the highest quality digital meter (with a remote sensor, digital display and SCADA link) on a one-off isolated property; the typical costs quoted by the Ministry (not including reduced costs based on bulk purchase of units and increases in efficiency due to scale) were $1,000 to $2,000 per unit. I’ve priced units for use in discharge points at less than $500 per unit (installed) for a bare bones analog meter.
As for the rest of your posting, let’s get this straight. The issue being addressed is the falling level of groundwater in existing aquifers. A fact that is indisputable (the Township posts their data on groundwater levels and the results are disconcerting) so your advice is to drill more community wells in the aquifers?
Another point you seem to be missing in your discussion is the absence of water distribution infrastructure in large swathes of the Township. The reason houses aren’t hooked up to water lines in the Hoppington is not because people want to use well water. It is because the pipes don’t exist in the ground to supply that water. The infrastructure costs to install water lines throughout the Township are potentially huge. Think what it cost to build one line down 200th and then multiply it by hundreds of kms to fill in the water grid. As for your suggestion to feed Aldergrove into the existing system. While the idea is a positive you are overloooking a major problem. Not only do you have to fill the 4 mile gap you would also need to upgrade intermediate pipes along to system to address the increased load.
Your most mind boggling suggestion is where you suggest we build the piping infrastructure AND a desalination plant. Have you ever looked at the costs of desalination? A cheap system will put you back 59 cents/m3 (not including land acquisition costs). Langley currently pays about 30 cents/m3 to Metro Vancouver (price varies with season) so you are suggesting an alternative that will at least double our current rate for water. Not to mention the massive amount of energy needed to run the desalination system? In this age of fears regarding global warming, where do you think the energy is going to come from. Hydro is already importing power and a desalination plant is a massive power user.
Blair, your point regarding the infrasructure that is needed for the distribution of water is absolutely true, regardless of where we get water, other than from wells. You could have also said that that network of piping has to start somewhere, and then be extended over a period of time as financing permits. Personally I'm still waiting for the township to make the move towards that start point, even if it's one man and a backhoe. I'm sure that nobody expects the whole project to be done in one swack.
Alas though, Kurt and his sheep have other flashy projects that have more curb appeal in the short term, but at the cost of the basic structure of our community in the coming days. That's his version of sound planning, but it reflects the attitude of a populist rather than a real leader. With any luck, November will bring about change, and it may arrive just in time.
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