Metro Vancouver is known for having some of the best tap water in the world, and the region is about to unveil a project 10 years in the making that will make its high-quality H2O even better.
The $150-million Seymour-Capilano filtration project is set to link two major water reservoirs on the North Shore – the Seymour and Capilano reserves – via twin tunnels.
“Right now the water that we drink that comes from the Seymour Reservoir, Seymour Lake, goes through the filter system and then it gets UV disinfected and a little bit of chlorine added,” said North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto, who also chairs Metro Vancouver’s Utilities Committee.
“Well, we would love to do that to the Capilano as well, so we actually made two twin tunnels. So the last 10 years we’ve been boring tunnels, so the water from the Capilano gets transferred over to the Seymour, it’s filtered, and then it’s sent back through a separate tunnel and then through the distribution system over to the City of Vancouver.”
The region’s director of water policy and planning says the upgrade will provide more flexibility in case a major water source experiences a dip in quality.
“It can easily be made up in regards to the alternate source, in having two sources of supply that are both filtered,” said Inder Singh.
Mussatto said the new source of water should be up and running in the next several weeks.
Once the tunnels are operational, the Seymour-Capilano filtration plant will pump out up to 1.8-billion litres of drinking water per day.
Because the filtration plant is at a higher elevation than the Capilano station, the project will also generate some hydro-electric power for the new distribution system.
The region also completed upgrades last year to introduce UV disinfection to the water supply, making Metro Vancouver home to some of the purest drinking water on the planet.
Singh said despite that, water consumption is trending downward in Metro Vancouver.
The usage of water is going down even though the population is increasing and we need to rely upon that to continue,” he said. “Otherwise at some point in time, whether it’s a decade or two or three down the road, we will get to the point where water becomes something more of a commodity similar to California where there isn’t enough to go around.”
Officials say the bottom line is that residents should take advantage of tap water, but keep conservation in mind when it comes to using it for anything else.
“We can always do better,” said Mussatto. “In the past we used to use water for everything: whether it was washing cars or watering our lawns. Now we’re making great strides, we’re starting to make sure we only use it when we need it.”
With a report from CTV Vancouver's Peter Grainger
