Vancouver is one of the greenest cities in the world, surrounded by trees, mountains and wild life. Living in this beautiful city is a lot of people’s dream. Unfortunately a home owner’s dream turned into a nightmare 15 months ago in late September, 2015 when inexperienced and non-certified drillers breached a water aquifer. Since then it has consistently been spewing one million liters of water a day, underneath a three million dollar lot in the west side of Vancouver. They later fled the country, trying to hide from potential fines and possible jail time. Negligence is, however, not the biggest issue;. it is the fact that a precious resource water is being wasted.
According to CBC’s June 6, 2016 article, it has been calculated that an average human being uses 322 liters of water a day, which is an exorbitant amount. Water is a vital resource to human life and for a water aquifer to be breached and spill roughly one million liters of water a day for 15 months is a travesty. We need to conserve our water and not take it for granted. Water is becoming a more important resources than oil. City officials should have provided a more timely response as to what needed to be done at this west side multi-million dollar lot.
The breached aquifer needs to be sealed! A work force and a cement truck has been the plan and has been shut down multiple times. With the city wanting a forever fix, the contractors have tried to explain nothing is a forever fix and that they can only do what has worked in the past. Sealing the breach with layers of cement and stacking it like the earth’s inner core layers is the proposed plan and is what other cities and contractors have done in the past, which has worked. They just need the go ahead to stop the bleeding.
I understand that there are bigger issues out there, but 15 months is way too long of a time wasted. It’s not fair to our precious ecosystem. It puts stress on surrounding wildlife and green space. Yes, it will be fixed as final plans are in the process of approval, but is it too late? Have we wasted too much water? All these question and now the waiting game on repercussions starts as the wait for approval ends.
Photos Courtesy of CBC.
