Lantzville council has decided against changes that would have made certain watering restrictions mandatory, rather than voluntary.
A discussion was held at a meeting Wednesday, May 14. The changes would have restricted lawn watering to one day per week under Stage 3 restrictions, putting the municipality in line with Regional District of Nanaimo framework. Glenn Morphy, Lantzville's director of public works, urged council to adopt the change, citing "continued challenges with water conservation."
"During this entire process I assure you I have met with staff, including your senior operator, and received messaging from them every time we've been in every meeting – frustration with our existing restrictions," Morphy said. "If you look at Level 3 it says 'voluntary.' Voluntary has been a very sore spot for our staff … Staff have been very clear they want that removed."
Councillors Ian Savage, Rachelle Mundell and Joan Jones were opposed to changing the water restrictions.
"The RDN is not a senior level of government to our municipality and municipalities in our area have traditionally had jurisdiction to their watering restrictions and I'm not prepared to give it up," Savage said. "I'm also opposed to renaming water restrictions throughout the RDN by calling it 'water conservation.'"
Savage added that if Lantzville aligns its water restrictions with the RDN, his worry is "we may irreversibly handing over our jurisdiction in this matter."
"The proposed water restrictions for current residents are to save more water to be used for more new housing, that's not conservation, that's water restrictions as a sacrifice for current residents in order to enable more and more water being used for more and more housing."
Jones, who was also opposed, drew attention to the word change and argued there was "no proof here that this particular framework would actually result in conservation." Sometime in the future though, she said she would like to have a discussion on ways to save water used for lawn watering.
"Given that water is needed for new development and there is no impact analysis of the new development additional needs on water throughout the region, it to my mind is not justifiable to change the word 'restriction' to 'conservation,' we simply don't know it is conservation," Jones said. "So that to me is pretty important, that's not a word to use lightly."
Mayor Mark Swain was the only one supporting the motion. Ahead of the vote he said he was "taken aback" by council's response.
"The reason why this has all come about … was so that all communities in the region are doing the same thing, kind of like a unanimous thing we all do so people are not confused…" Swain said. "What I like about this is its consistency with our neighbouring jurisdictions. This is our bylaw, this isn't the RDN bylaw, so this is not something that can't be reversed in the future and by no way giving any of our authority to the RDN, so I have zero concerns about that."
