Fact Or Fiction

The City appears to be disturbed by the simple facts referred to in my blog post last Thursday entitled Braun Reveals Actual Peak Water Use Down 33%. It troubles me that the City felt the need to spend $200,000 in order to hire outside marketing consultants to convince us to vote “yes”. Why? Should not the facts speak for themselves?

A recent response to my blog post by a City Councillor states that “speculative conclusions have been made about water usage trends without consideration of the many variables which affect consumption”. The City Councillor went on to say that, “The inference is that real projections should be 33% less than the City’s projections. Seems reasonable until one does a small amount of investigation and discovers the following facts”. However, the only “facts” referred to is the same data that was included in my November 10 post together with added peak temperature dates.

The point of my article was to compare the ACTUAL water usage and the City’s theoretical PROJECTED water usage. There is a significant difference between the ACTUAL post-2007 figures and the City’s theoretical PROJECTIONS that support the “we will be out of water by 2016 if we don’t vote yes” campaign. Why? I haven’t had time to go through all of the $2 million dollars’ worth of consultant’s reports, but it makes me wonder what else are we not being told? Isn’t this the same way we got into funding the operating deficit at the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Complex? The taxpayers were told one thing, based on theoretical PROJECTIONS, and yet the ACTUAL turned out to be quite different.

The point of my article was not intended to be a comprehensive study. Rather, I wanted to show that by using common sense, the kind that voters will use on November 19, the numbers just do not add up. What the City now wishes to say is that water usage depends upon influence of temperature on the top two consumption dates for each of the past six years. Sounds logical, but a layman’s review of the information provided only raises more questions.

If this is all about temperature, then the City Councillor needs to explain why the water usage for the hottest days in 2011 (30.70 and 30.10 Celsius) was only 93.08 and 91.41 MLD. Compare this to July 22, 2009, when the temperature was the same (30.80 Celsius) and the water usage was up over 30%, at 126.60 MLD? A week later on July 29, 2009, the temperature soared to 38.0 Celsius, and yet the water consumption decreased to 121.99 MLD. It is obvious that temperature has a part to play in water consumption. But it does not appear to be a determining factor.

The City’s own raw data shows that both Peak and Average water usage has seen a steady decline over the past 4 years – that is a fact! This steady decline occurred despite increases in the City’s population and the arrival of new businesses – that is a fact! Could it be that the people of Abbotsford, realizing that we were wasting water, actually did what the City suggested? They began to take water conservation seriously. We are now experiencing water consumption levels not seen since 2002.

My major point remains: There is no question that at some point we will need water, but based on the numbers it won’t be 2016. Instead of taking ACTUAL usage into account, the City has painted a “Chicken Little” picture in its $200,000 ad campaign that does not reflect reality.

Instead of digging a deeper public relations hole, the City should stop digging and just lay out all of the facts. Based on the FACTS, our leadership needs to let the people of Abbotsford decide if they want to proceed with this plan as presented.

If our civic leaders expect us to trust them, they must start by trusting us.

As Abraham Lincoln said, “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”