Metro Vancouver's Water Problem | CBC Short Film by Uytae Lee 

Thanks for having me on again CBC Vancouver!

Love the videos from Uytae! His video style and narration to describe important issues is always high quality

Uytae has a way of combining in-depth issues and quality information with a spirit of light-heartedness - even silliness - that is super appealing to me. More of this please :)

Uytae Lee needs his own channel. The videos are awesome!

If our cities were designed with these problems in mind, all the rain that falls on a city could be collected, stored, and filtered. The whole city could be a massive rain barrel

This is like the unfinished London series. Nice to see it come to Vancouver.

Stop watering the grass it doesn't need it!!

This really makes me appreciate being born and raised here

There are three ways you can provide a very long term answer to water usage in all cities around the world. First is to replace all of the combined sewerage and rainwater drainage pipe systems with separated systems so only the sewerage goes to the sewerage treatment plants and only the rainwater drainage water goes to a different treatment plant where it's filtered and made safe for human usage before being pumped into the city water system with any excess being allowed to flow out into the rivers and the sea. Second is to replace all of the household and personal use water systems with low pressure systems so less water comes out of the taps and showers etc. A typical mains pressure is about 3 times the water flow actually needed for a shower or washing hands, thus a move to low pressure system greatly reduces the amount of water used. Third is to enact legislation to allow home owners to collect rainwater on their property for their own use and to also use grey water systems for watering the lawns and gardens. The result will be a huge reduction is water usage. back in the early 1990s I managed the change over to use low pressure systems and the use of grey water on an Australian military base and saw a 70% reduction in water usage while improving the amount of water available for use on the base grounds and attached golf club via the use of grey water for them.

I don't see any mention at all of all the industries, and all the water they use. The only pictures I see are ordinary citizens with a hose washing their car. Could you show all users of water not just people going to work paying taxes?

Pump water up from the reservoirs to the mountain tops on days of well below freezing temperatures(late fall-early winter); use a sprinkle system to create Ice Stapes(Large pyramid cone of Ice)on the mountains tops. The stapes will sit there all winter long and will melt slower than snow in the summer time meaning a steady stream of water flowing to the reservoirs which would last all summer.

This video is so well done! I could see (hear?) Uytae Lee succeeding Stephen Quinn on the Early Edition someday down the road.

When i heard Canada doesn't have water meters my mind exploded

Love it Uytae. Keep up the great work.

loving this glacial lake water ontario just swims in.

Maybe it's cause they sell all the natural water Springs to big companies and they bottle the water for you to buy,ask the residents in hope,bc ,they go through it every summer.

metering is a good thought but with metering comes charges and with charges means more billing. Costs in metro vancouver are high already we need to find a way to reduce spending and water use. You cant keep going to the well as they say and asking everyone to pay more eventually the well runs dry and people leave. Its not good for anyone. Creative ways to fix this problem need to be thought through. Its not just about charging more that is the easy way out. Think long term as well as most of these fixes think only short term.

So many people don't follow the water regulations in the summer.

An important message, very well presented.

Awesome job Uytae!

The long term cost of not building more infrastructure now will result in increasing water shortages for generations to come. We need to address this problem before we are in a serious water crisis.

Excellent finally an Uplifting article, now I can continue merrily on my way🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

lol - try the central coast - since 1910 or so - 200 inches of precipitation/yr average till the 70's. Was interesting it was

New houses are metered and costs over 2 dollars per cubic meter, however new condos are not metered.

Can the water be recycled from waste water?

Yes Vancouver is one of the most expensive cities. But also Yea, it is possible to live here if you aren't rich. And it is really not hard to find work.

Heres an idea, Harrison lake should be able to fill in the water shortages if we build a pipeline to Vancouver.

Our unique problem is not water... our problem is that much of the world would like to come here ...

The city of Vancouver now installs water meters on every new house. Also, here is a solution: stop the density of Vancouver and let people move further out which is happening anyway. Furthermore, I thought we sold water to Seattle?

what about desalination of ocean water?

Build more infrastructure!!

What about desalination plants for ocean water???

whats wrong with the frazer river. it has a lot of water and its next to vancouver

Just preparing to pay for water. Another tax.

Get that water meter up in this bitch

The opening pissed me off.... it's almost a cliche

Watering grass Should be illegal

'vanxoucer is rainy wahh' Vancouver gets less rain than New York and Houston. Victoria gets less than Rome, Dubrovnik and Palermo.

So we want to increase population but not increase infrastructure. Adding water meters will just turn into a new tax they can raise so that people can invest in empty homes and save on a water bill. Just raise the dams. Didn't the increased population increase the tax base to pay for that infrastructure? Of course not... Increasing population is only for our banks and business quarterly profits growth.

How bout no more grass lawns

So.. First, I'm not a climate denier. But if your predictions continue to be wrong (ie. (2014: "There will be an end to winter soon where snowfall will be reduced by 85%),then you can't continue to move the goalposts. I've noticed this trend now, whereas all new climate disaster models have all been moved into the far future. So with record snowfalls happening all over the Northern Hemisphere (just type in "record snowfalls" on Google news), we have to wonder what could be the cause of this? It's only been recently that the Media is now running this story after ignoring it for the last few years:The solar minimum. Of course the rock bottom of this 11 year cycle has just started, but the downtrend was quite noticeable these last few winters. Vancouver was spared this last winter, in that we held off the cold weather until February. Then the snow came. But 2 winters ago, we actually had an iceberg in Burrard inlet! This solar minimum is in a way holding back Global warming for the time being. And some things have reversed. California's drought is now having lakes with their emergency spillways being opened, because of too much water,on an annual basis now. The taps that were turned off for people's drinking water in the great lakes, because they were losing water, from global warming, are now turned back on because they have risen so high so fast, that they are overflowing. But that being said, our enviroment is being destroyed. By way of pollution, caused by overpopulation. So, even though I come from roots that built this city from the beginning, I must now conserve and pay up, to make way for the tens of thousands of people that move here every year? I recall the media for Years, back in the 80's telling us how we need to have more people here, and how it would be economically benefitual for us. So explain to me how I economically benefited from all this growth? Seems to me it has quite the opposite effect. Seems to me all this growth always comes with various price tags to numerous to mention. It's like having permanent guests filling up your house, demanding you go out and buy more and more groceries. Yes, Vancouver could very well have a water problem in the future, if we continue this infinite growth. But of course the city should know all this infrastructure comes with massive growth. I mean the population has doubled in just 25 years! Therefore we should have double the hospitals, schools, etc, right?

Quit selling our water

The elephant in the room is that there isn't a pollution or water problem in your area....it's a people problem....kept jamming more people in, you'll get to a dead end quicker.