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The B.C. Parks proposal is both radical and completely avoidable, according to Barry Janyk, executive director of the Federation of Mountain Clubs of B.C.

“The SCRD is being completely myopic,” he said. “Our water problems will not be resolved by the quantity of water in Chapman Lake, there just isn’t enough volume to provide for the future of the Sunshine Coast.”

The District has a multi-pronged long-term strategy for dealing with the looming water crisis, which includes construction of an engineered lake reservoir to increase storage capacity that could spare Tetrahedron Park from significant disruption.

It also calls for charging residents for water after its $13-million meter-installation project is complete and tapping into an aquifer that runs under the Town of Gibsons.

“Metering alone would decrease demand (for water) by 40 per cent,” said Janyk, a former mayor of Gibsons. “That will buy them some time and then they can just take the $5 million they want to spend raising Chapman Lake and build the reservoir.”

However, the SCRD board is evenly split about whether to go ahead with the Chapman Lake expansion, said Bruce Milne, the board chairman and Sechelt’s mayor.

“When B.C. Parks holds its open house in Sechelt in May there should be a third option: None of the above,” he said. “Another option should be to prioritize supply and storage.”

Milne says that accelerating the reservoir plan by one or two years would eliminate the need for disruptive work on the Chapman Lake plant.