Water Meter Project Update
- kc dyer
- Aug 21
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 30
Public information sessions to be part of the process
Earlier this year, Lions Bay was awarded just under $4 million dollars in the form of a grant from the BC Water Metering Pilot Program.
The money is intended to cover the entire cost of installing water meters into each residential property, along with the engineering required for monitoring water usage and pressure. As one of the piloting communities, the installation will provide information to the province prior to the mandatory roll-out of province-wide metering.
To meet these parameters, the project must be up and running by the end of March 2027.
An 11-step timeline of the project can be found on the Village website HERE.
July of this year marked the sixth step in the timeline, by which time all the required parts should have been received and initial installations underway. Public Works Director of Operations Karl Buhr, who was the driving force behind the Village's receipt of this grant, says that the process is well in hand.
"About $226,000 worth of components for the watermain zone metering pieces are proprietary to the 14 pressure release valve stations, so they could be procured without competitive tender," Buhr told The Watershed this week. He added that this equipment has been safely received, and will be installed over the next six months or so.
Buhr said the associated work on the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition system (which allows the data from the meters to be collected and monitored) is happening at the same time.
In order to install meters at each home, a site survey is required, which is expected to take four to six weeks to complete. Buhr says that depending on government procurement policy requirements, this process could begin by late September.
Once results are in and again depending on the procurement policy, installations in residential homes could begin as early as October, ahead of the planned start date of March 2026.
Buhr says there are 14 water meter zones spread throughout the Village and it is not yet decided which neighbourhood will be first to have meters installed. He says that 'townhall' public information sessions are planned throughout the process to keep residents up to speed on the progress of the project. "The goal is that unless someone chooses to disregard all outreach, they will know when, what, where and why it’s happening before it happens."
Further questions can be directed to feedback@lionsbay.ca. Staff have committed to posting questions of interest to the community on the water meter information page HERE.
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An RFP was posted on BC Bid on August 11, with aggressive timelines.
https://www.bcbid.gov.bc.ca/page.aspx/en/bpm/process_manage_extranet/218592
From the RFP document (which is publicly available);
The Village of Lions Bay (“municipality”) has received a grant under the BC Water Metering Pilot Program to install AMI water meters on all the community’s private and institutional property water connections, and to provide continuous zone metering and remote pressure turndown capability at 14 PRV stations. The municipality now invites proposals for the following services pertaining thereto:
Scope of services: Locate, assess and mark all applicable sites, and record all applicable attributes, at approx. 600 locations for in-ground AMI meter sites throughout the Village, such that conditions are sufficiently quantified to minimize provision for unknowns in future…
Water metering thoughout the community will be an important way for the Village to identify leaks and other inefficiencies in the water distribution system and, in turn, better manage the costs of supplying water to each household.
It appears that certain interests attempted to keep the proposed grant behind closed doors and hidden from public view. It may have been those who consume above-average amounts of water with their swimming pools and lawn watering systems.
If it wasn't for Karl Buhr's involvement, we might have missed this 4 million dollar opportunity.
Thank you Karl.