CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Huddled in a circle, 20 Grade 5 Parkdale Elementary students pass a spoonful of blue liquid between them, as they would a delicate possession. Drips tumble with splats on the ground, representing the accelerating loss of the world’s available fresh water. The last student barely gets a drop.
The students’ teacher, Faber MacDonald, brought them to Holland College to learn about water conservation from water educator Billy Ramsay. The Stratford water and wastewater operator has been teaching Water’s Cool!, a water conservation program, since 2008 and has been invited this year to bring his wall of leaky faucets and his watercooler-jug sidekick, Willie, across the bridge as part of Charlottetown’s push to become more sustainable.
“Most kids are very passionate about saving the environment,” Ramsay said of his students.
While he walks them through how to fix a leaky bathroom tap, a colleague takes students next-door on an in-class tour of the Winter River Watershed, which Charlottetown has historically depended on for clean water.
Grade 5 Leah McEntee watched her classmates let litres upon litres flow through taps as they washed their hands and brushed their teeth in front of their peers. McEntee saw just how much waste water she could accumulate in her daily routine. For an average tap, two litres can flow out in 30 seconds.
“Wasting water is not helping anything,” McEntee said of what she learned. “Some people like us are really lucky to have it,” she said, noting that for much of the world, clean water on-tap is a luxury.
Dwindling fresh water has hit Charlottetown recently too. In 2012, Environment Canada said that the city was drawing too much from the Winter River Watershed, which has seen creek beds dry up over the last decade. It’s partly why the city opened a second source, the Miltonvale well field, last year. But while having supply is important, Ramsay said that showing the impacts of waste and conservation are key. Since the town of Stratford began monitoring water use in all homes last fall, he said that use has dropped by 13 per cent over all.
“It’s going to affect the pocketbooks of a lot of people,” Ramsay said of the monitoring system. “Everyone knew that their bills were going to be [a fixed amount] before, and now some people’s bills are $300, $600, up to $2,000.”
For Ramsay, children are the key to cutting back on water waste and hefty bills.
“I find that the kids are like little policemen,” he said. “When they go back to their homes, they’re very serious about it and they’ll start teaching their brothers and sisters and parents.”
A public, all-ages, water conservation class will run 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 16 at Holland College’s Prince of Wales campus.
