However….

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they are now thinking long term and will be fitting water meters to every household in the island over the next 5years. The reason for this is that demand over the next 25 years is expected to increase by 15 per cent. This coupled with the fact that the water supply is expected to reduce by 11 per cent is going to cause a huge problem for the Island and its water supply.

This means the following action is likely to take place to conserve water…. (Does anyone remember the flooding of Queen’s valley?) yes the once beautiful valley that was flooded on the instruction of the then Deputy Don Filliuel.

Principally this will mean installing 17,500 meters free of charge across the Island. This will begin with the northern parishes. It will also consider further flooding Val de la Mare reservoir by a height of nine metres to increase capacity from 900 million litres to 2,100 million litres.Extracting water from more boreholes in St Ouen’s Bay to generate up to two million litres of water per day.

Using the latest technology to reduce leaks by 25 per cent. (Shouldn’t they be doing this already?)

Educating Islanders about how to use less water. (Maybe a reduction in immigration would be a better way of dealing with this problem?)

Water Meters vs Job Creation

Ok so lets get back to the point of me writing this article… yes it’s a good thing to be proactive and conserve our water and the fitting of meters is a good thing… but and it’s a big BUT…. the States stated policy is to increase our population and have not ruled out it reaching 100,000….. (See policy statement here)

So I’m extremely sceptical that this latest announcement is anything to do with saving water and more to do with the expected increase in population that the States have clearly stated that it wants to see happen. And it's inability to provide the water to sustain it. I get the feeling that nothing in life is free including water meters... here comes another new tax I think!

And its funny that when Senator le Sueur announced this fact he said he would quite happily allow the population reach 100,000….. the time scale was 25 years.

One last point… why were all the staff laid off from Jersey Water when they knew well in advance that they had work lined up for the next 5 years fitting water meters?

A coincidence….. or just forward planning…. I will let you decide.