Further efforts to make Penticton a Blue Community will be headed to council on Tuesday, March 15.
Members of the Blue Communities Project first presented the principles behind being a Blue Community to the city’s sustainability advisory committee in March, 2021. After the committee’s August meeting, they recommended that council support the city joining the project.
The three key principles of what makes a Blue Community include recognizing that access to water and sanitation are human rights, banning or phasing out the sale of bottled water at municipal facilities and events and promoting publicly financed, owned and operated water and wastewater services.
Out of those project’s objectives, the city already has met some of them, including operating the public water and wastewater system and providing potable tap water at public facilities.
Council on Tuesday will decide whether to go forward with completing the remaining goals of the project, including a full ban of bottled water at municipal facilities and events. Staff are recommending that the city continue to support its sustainable practices, while not fully committing to joining the Blue Communities Project.
As part of the project, the city would also be required to lobby the provincial and federal government to enshrine the human rights to water and sanitation into law alongside the ban on selling bottled water, and expanding the availability of potable water. In addition to the staff costs, installing water bottle fill stations runs from $4,000 to $6,000 indoors to $8,000 to $10,000 for outdoors, depending on the location and other factors.
The city will be applying for grant funding in 2022 to increase the number of these stations in the city separately according to the staff report.
READ MORE: Stay hydrated: Nine public water filling stations in Penticton
Staff also noted that other options the city could look into would be selling reusable water bottles in vending machines in city facilities instead of bottled water, and that bottled water provides “an important, useful, convenient and safe alternative option for drinking water in some specific situations.”
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