Overcoming The Myth of Infinite Water

I was warned. Before I drove my pickup across the continent to move here last August, I was warned that if I wanted to enjoy my life in Vancouver I should get used to rain and lots of it. It took a few months, but I soon understood what I had signed up for. And now it seems our summer has been hijacked by the prior nine months.

Regardless of the anomaly, the data is still irrefutable. It typically rains 4.5 times as much in November as it does in July. Summer is but one of the four seasons, but here in Vancouver, accounts for only 8.6% of the annual rainfall. Because of this and the fact that the three summer months are time for peak residential water use, our city has enacted the recently publicized lawn watering regulations. Slowly, but surely, the City of Vancouver is growing closer to the goal it set for itself, to reduce per capita water consumption by 33% by 2020. Due primarily to water conservation regulations, including the summertime lawn watering education and regulation program, mandated low-flow water fixtures for new construction, and a recently approved mandate to incrementally implement water metering in all new residential construction, 21% of the 33% reduction will, by all estimates, be accounted for.

Accounting for the remaining 12% reduction can be achieved through the widespread use of rainwater harvesting (RWH) and reuse techniques. If all residential structures were to implement RWH to supplement their potable water use, it could account for an average monthly reduction of water consumption by nearly 20%. Despite reaching this numbered goal, harvesting rainwater can achieve two important and practical goals.

First, the use of rainwater can divert some of the highest quality drinking water in the world used to perform non-potable tasks as washing clothing, flushing toilets, and ground irrigation of lawns and gardens. Second, it can help perform a lesser known task – it will help divert a portion of the 41 billion litres of annual rainwater runoff from directly polluting streams as well as inundating the city’s combined sewer system and polluting the region’s larger waterways during storm events.

Work has been completed to bring Vancouver closer to regulation of RWH, but guiding policies, namely those regarding defining non-potable water quality, are not yet in place. Of the various barriers, political and cultural, is the belief in the myth that Vancouverites enjoy an infinite amount of freshwater and that RWH is unnecessary. This certainly seemed true to me as I spent nearly a year here, but I have a clearer picture now.

Droughts do happen here. They tend to happen when we need water the most, to either water our prize lawns or our small plot in the community garden one block away. Due to the eventual threats posed by climate change during this half of the century - the decreased snow melt and source of our water, longer dry periods, and water demand from the increased environmental refugee population it will bring to the region - it is in the best interest of the public for this additional conservation measure begin to be implemented now.

Just 1mm of rainfall falling upon on a roof surface measuring 1 square meter in area yields 1 litre of harvested water. Where better a place to capture water where it falls free from the sky then here in Vancouver. The sooner the city mandates the use of harvested rainwater for such uses as toilet flushing and in-ground irrigation, the more secure our water future will look.

It Began This Summer

Currently working on my Masters of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture from the University of British Columbia, I am researching the power of design within the urban environment to foster a biophilic connection with the natural world. I believe design and land planning have the power to reconnect people to natural systems and subsequently help cities become more resilient in the face of growing climate uncertainty and resource scarcity.

This summer, I was chosen to be a Greenest City Scholar to work on the City’s eighth goal, known as “Clean Water”. The research I completed this summer galvanized my spirit and appropriately sharpened my focus. In turn, water has become the specific driver for me and the exploration into my assumptions about powers of design.

My first year at the University of British Columbia had me focused on coursework and reacquainting myself with life as a student and a sponge for knowledge. This, my second year, begins with two courses, Landscape Planning and Management and the first ever CityStudio, each of which require weekly reflections. Both will relate to my eventual thesis and will inevitably feed into each other.

This blog begins as a home for these reflections, the articulation of my conservation ethos, and the honing of my ideas.