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Letter: City shouldn’t provide treated water to power plant

The decision to burn or not burn railroad ties at Atlantic Power will not be made by mayor, council or city residents.

Editor:

The decision to burn or not burn railroad ties at Atlantic Power will not be made by mayor, council or city residents.

It will be made out of town by the Ministry of Environment.

EPCOR’s bid to take over Williams Lake’s water infrastructure when it owned the power plant was stopped by wise and alert city workers.

If the bid had succeeded, Atlantic Power would now be in total control and every household would have a water metre.

Businesses need metres, but households only for a short season each year.  Besides, it’s our water.

We need clean air and water to survive. We are wasting a million gallons of water each day by supplying treated drinking water to Atlantic Power.

Give Atlantic Power notice the city will no longer supply treated drinking water from our aquifer.

The Fraser River has lots of water and other options are possible.

This would stop the present plan to burn railroad ties and get the city working on just getting a new water supply.

The city receives a million dollars a year in taxes from Atlantic Power and a million a year for water, not pocket change.

But one 500 ml plastic bottle of drinking water purchased in a store costs from $1 to $1.75 each.

That means a gallon of water is worth eight to $12., depending on where you make your purchase.

Even at only $1 a bottle, the city would receive $1 million a day for water that is it now wasted on Atlantic Power each day now for 27 years.

Williams Lake could be the wealthiest city in Canada and we would be creating more jobs.

The City has the trained men, the wells, the reservoirs, the pipelines, the filters, etc. We just need more filtration and a bottling assembly, etc. in the vacant building across from Atlantic Power.

It is time to stop the madness.

And now they want to pollute the air we breath.

I have talked to the city about this plan and they keep telling me you can’t sell water. What does the city think they have done for 27 years and every drop not drinking?

Peter Epp

Williams Lake