The Utilities Services Manager with Kamloops says 2019 is looking to be about the same as last year when it comes to water consumption in the city.

Greg Wightman says last years was a banner year for conservation with less than 18 billion litres of water being consumed. He says when water metre replacements were completed it resulted in a big drop in water demand. “The climate we live in requires a lot of irrigation water. So, by putting metres in and people beginning to pay for the water that they’re using, obviously being a lot more aware of that consumption, we’ve seen a massive reduction. We have seen… 25% less production now than we were in 2009.”

Wightman says despite the reduced consumption there will be no increase in water rates as the cost is being off-set by hydro savings. Major capital projects are also a ways away as the population will need to see significant growth before the upgrade to the Kamloops Centre for Water Quality comes online. “With what we’ve seen now we’ve seen about a 26% reduction in our maximum day demand. So, we were able to put off that upgrade that was thought to be necessary back in those years and we’ve actually bought ourselves a lot of capacity. Se we are looking quite a few year out now in terms of our capital projections for that upgrade…. Right now we’re sitting at about 106,000 cubic metres as our daily peak. Our daily peak total production that we can produce down at the plant is 160. So we were at 143 back in 2009, we’ve bought ourselves a lot of capacity.”

Wightman says people in Kamloops consumed less than 18 billion litres of water last year and this year he’s predicting that we are right in line with that figure.