Residential lawn watering and car washing will not be allowed in the City of Merritt as of Monday, with no exceptions made in any circumstance.
The city is implementing water restrictions due to the drought like conditions on the Coldwater River, which has the driest water basin in BC.
“This is a drastic step, but one we have to take”, said Chief Administrative Officer, Scott Hildebrand. “We’ve been working closely with the Province regarding water restrictions since July, but the situation in the Coldwater River basin remains dire. The discharge level has halved since the start of August, and we are hovering around the critical environmental flow threshold of 0.43 m3/s.”
City staff have also shut down the spray park as of 1 p.m. on August 22, and have stopped irrigating in all parks and the cemetery. Street sweeping, washing of roadways and washing company vehicles have also all been stopped for the time being.
The city is also starting to pull residential drinking water from the Nicola aquifer as opposed to the Coldwater aquifer.
However, staff note vegetable gardens may still be watered once a week using automatic irrigation or controlled sprinklers, (Tuesday for odd numbered addresses and Friday for even numbered addresses). Vegetables and flowers may be watered by hand as required, as long as a controlled flow nozzle is used.
“The Coldwater is not our only source of water, and we have increased the proportion we’re pulling from the Nicola river. This allows us to tell residents that they can continue to water vegetable gardens, so they don’t lose the home produce they’ve been working on for months,” said Mayor Linda Brown. “However, starting Monday, we will be looking for people using water on lawns, and we will be enforcing our bylaw and policy.”
“As a City we’re going to follow the same rules as everyone else. We wanted to keep our parks beautiful and the Spray Park operational for as long as possible, but we cannot in good conscience maintain this position given the circumstances we are in, despite the public benefit we know these resources provide.”
