British Columbia often comes off smelling like roses in the Cascadia Scorecard – energy consumption, sprawl, lifespan, etc.
But the province lags far behind the Northwest states in the most basic step toward water conservation in homes and other buildings: charging by the gallon. The last figure I saw for British Columbia had more than 80 percent of residents paying for their water at a fixed rate. Most BC buildings don’t even have water meters where they draw water from public mains.
In the Northwest states, unmetered water is a rarity, found almost exclusively in remote rural areas or in places where people draw on their own wells.
Another thing about BC is that it often copies California’s environmental steps-clean car rules, air quality rules, etc. Yesterday, California mandated that cities charge their residents for water based on the quantity used, as the Sacramento Bee reports. Perhaps BC will emulate the Golden State again.
The California move is directly good for Cascadia in one other way: some small share of Sacramento’s water flows from the Trinity River, in northwestern California and southern Cascadia.
