I met with Bob Macpherson,the District of Tofino CAO to discuss the Watermetergate scandal today.This is what I learned:
The DOT Finance department alerted the Administration to the problems with the water billing in May of 2014.
Two meters to resorts were showing only 10% of the actual water consumption. (click on above chart)
There were problems with other water meters showing less than actual consumption.
The water meters at all the major resorts and two fish plants have been changed.
Since the water meters have been changed there has been a $60,000 surplus accumulated in the operational reserve of the water system.
None of the resorts notified the District that they were being undercharged on their water consumption.
The District doesn't have an exact figure on potential losses but a review of water bills from the past decade or so should provide an approximation.A review of water bills should also give a timeline as to when the water meters began to malfunction.
Using the figures provided by the West Coast Resort Association the District of Tofino failed to account for approximately 2,411,861 gallons of water in one quarter alone !!!
27 comments:
Thanks for this.Hard to believe nobody at the resorts or the District noticed until last May.
If anybody was watching the difference between water through the pumps and water billed for they would have thought there was a faulty meter or a serious leak in the system.
Higher Education is needed here
LOL
Really ? how many years before the finance dept realized that a 77 room hotel probably uses more water than a family home.
the North American standard for household water consumption is deemed to be 200 gallons per day. if anybody in the DOT ever bothered to find out by looking at a number of resorts in peak season and dividing their peak season monthly consumption by the number of rooms then dividing by 30 you would find that the average daily consumption for a resort room is also 200 gallons per day.
these figures are available by looking at the water bills in the district office.
in the past, whoever on Council was delegated to be the water person, would have monitored consumption based on a general average of 200 gallons per day per room.
since council no longer delegates sewer water public works etc. to individual members of Council to be responsible for stuff like this happens.
I'm not going to bother figuring out an estimate of how much revenue the DOT has seen leaking out of the district office in the last few years of this nonsense. it's that much more that you and I had to pay for water because no one paid any attention. suck it up butter cup.
to paraphrase an old adage ... there is never just one cockroach
I guess all those TFWs are good at water conservation
how much is a gallon of water worth?
Here's a cbc news article from 2010 regarding schooner restaurant with a $10.422 water bill.
The restaurant had to start charging a $0.17 surcharge to every meal in order to keep their doors open.
Now in 2015 we find out that they likely have been billed way too much on every water bill they've got ! (thousands on each bill ?)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tofino-restaurant-struggles-to-pay-water-bills-1.975612
It's hard to have sympathy for these resorts asking for a break for the first quarter of 2015. Seriously? After how many years of getting away with this? That surplus should somehow be applied to the residents and businesses that have been subsidizing this service for them!
Ralph you write some 2 million gallons+ of water. do you really mean cubic meters of water as that is what they are measuring in that chart. Unknown is the cost of the water that the treatment plant at the south end of town is producing. It has to be over a $1per cubic meter. Worse yet is that there is no surplus as whatever money is supposedly excess will be needed for the new treatment plant VIHA wants the town to install on the town side of the water system.
This may also explain the mystery of where all the extra water that was being pumped through the sewer system was coming from that the district wondered about in the past.
Doh!!!
the restaurants back when their bill skyrocketed had continued to use multiple chill sinks to cool food where water was just left running into and out of sinks instead of using proper refrigeration.
I don't suppose many people have much sympathy for that sort of water usage being billed for. Those chill sinks were part of the reason we had a 'water shortage'.
Thanks tofino news for reporting this scandal !
Tofino residents have been subsidizing the water bills for these big resorts !! Council needs to have a serious look at how component the finance department is. I'm also disgusted by how this is being downplayed by Mayor Josie Osborne.
Almost 2 years ago when Councillor McMaster raised questions about some discrepancies evident in the 2013 Water Report, they were brushed aside by both the Mayor and the CAO. He is usually good with numbers!
that chart compares Q4
oct/nov/dec 2013 vs. oct/nov/dec 2014
New water-meters were installed at Pacific Sands & Crystal Cove halfway this quarter on 17-18 November 2014, so they read their water consumption accurately for only half this period!
These resorts were paying way less then 10% of their water bill and were made aware of this by the district last year summer.
I meant gallons.There are about 219 Imperial gallons in a cubic meter.I converted the figure as most people are familiar with gallons.thanks,Ralph
That means the were about 11,000 cubic metres of water not billed for. Wasn't the cost of operating that water plant at the south end of town something like $1.15 a metre? At a dollar a metre that is $11,000 the district lost and the rest of us paid for in our taxes or lost/unfunded other district services. Now multiply that by the YEARS the billing was incorrect and the district has lost a lot of money. Let's use the so-called surplus to do the required restoration of the concrete on the Sharp Creek dam and other water upgrades that have been delayed by the lack of money that the hotels have owed the community but not paid their share.
Just in this chart there's a $15.000 difference.........that's with new meters installed for only PARTIALLY of that quarter!!! (Total water cost 2013 $9.778 and in 2014 $24.711)
This is not accounting for any other Hotel or Fish plant etc. that's not on this chart.
We're talking about an estimated $200.000 - $500.000 that Tofino residents have been on the hook for in just the last few years!!!
.....and they want a decrease in their water bills after not paying their share? The hotels and the soaker tubs are the ones that forced the town to supply more water and forced the citizens water rates up.
Stupidity on their part for making everyone aware of the free ride they've had.
What everyone was suspecting in the past has sadly turned out to be all too true.
While we citizens were all taking 10 second showers and collecting that water for use in the toilets, these guys weren't even paying for their profligate usage.
SO glad not to be working at DoT anymore.
What a vacuous, embarrassing place that was to try and work.
The problems that place creates stem from a horrible work-place culture and crappy morale.
It's painful to even follow....
Facebook distracts this community from paying attention to important issues.................. Liking Josie's cleverly written post on does not make you an informed involved citizen
Yes the point is that nothing gets done about anything. there's no consequences to incompetence. at least this blog identifies some of the mistakes and incompetence that goes on in the DOT.
but so what? The toilets still flush, water comes out the tap and payday's on Friday. anybody asking for professional performance for their tax dollars worth of employment is looked upon as a negative butthead. happy face! there are no problems except the people who point them out.
allegedly new legislation proposed by the federal government will make it a crime to point out incompetence in government.
so no problem with laissez-faire.!.....
Perhaps the problem lies in the morale of the district office.
with most of the staff being taxpayers it can't be a happy time when the taxpayers watch their own money being wasted and their fellow taxpayers being treated like enemies.
municipalities who have learned this and corrected the perception that the taxpayer is the enemy have much happier workplaces and much happier taxpayers.
So a little research revealed that some resorts really get a free ride from our mayor and councillors.
When they pay their water bill late... THEY GET THEIR LATE FEES WAIVED!!
Long beach lodge got a $2.738,88 LATE FEE WAIVED by the DoT for their 2014, Q3 water bill. (for their resort AND PRIVATE RESIDENCE on Shore Pine Cres.)
Their water bill was $27.391,61 for July,August,Sept 2014.
https://tofino.civicweb.net/FileStorage/CEFB20CCABA6482BA3394EF26C246CD1-2014-12-04%20Letter%20from%20Long%20Beach%20Lodge%20Resort%20re%20.pdf
Instead of all the crybabies on this website beaking off about real stuff why don't we ask the Council to have a forensic audit done.
then there's no opinions; just a result at the end of it that declares how much money was lost and how it was lost.
it would be great if this could just be swept under the carpet and nobody brought it up again.
but when my taxes are indirectly given over to the profits of resorts by virtue of indifference I find this insulting.
Happy St Patrick's Day ! It's all good .Be sure to follow local politicians on Facebook,Twitter and Instagram.No need for an audit.No staff are accountable for their actions or lack thereof .Group hug and yoga at Monks property
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