Vancouver city staff have been sniffing out and educating water hogs as the city pushes for reduced water use ahead of the hot summer months.
In a pilot project started last year, staff began using metered account information to locate residences that use more water than average. Donny Wong, the manager of the city’s water design branch, said the pilot is more about education than punishment.
“In most cases, people are actually thankful for bringing it to their attention because they didn’t realize themselves how much water they were using,” Wong said Tuesday.
In some cases, that water use is a lot. Wong said one residence was discovered to be using as much water as more than 100 average homes. It wasn’t a typical residence, he explained, given its massive lot size, but still, the use was “significantly more than what was expected”.
