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From the Vancouver Sun
Vancouver residents may struggle to reduce their water consumption by installing low-flow toilets and letting their lawns go brown in summer. But those individual initiatives amount to a mere trickle against the city's thirstiest corporations and institutions.
A list of Vancouver's top-50 water users in 2007, obtained by The Vancouver Sun through freedom-of-information legislation, shows that the Molson Canada brewery on Burrard Street easily led the way by guzzling 1,052,286 cubic metres of water in 2007.
Vancouver brewery manager Rene Holt said in response that about 80 per cent of the water is used for various cleaning and pasteurizing processes, with the other 20 per cent returned as beer.
The brewery has spent about $250,000 on water-efficient technologies related to the compressor, pasteurizing, and bottle-washing systems that have helped to reduce consumption by at least 22 per cent since 2005, the highest rate of reduction of Molson's five breweries in Canada.
Per-capita water consumption in Vancouver totalled 542 litres per day in 2007, of which residential users contributed 295 litres. One cubic metre is the equivalent of 1,000 litres.
A total of 13,469 metered properties in the city - industrial, commercial, institutional, multiple-family buildings - account for 55 per cent of water consumption, compared with 80,969 unmetered single-family and duplex properties at 45 per cent.
Industrial users account for four per cent of water use in the city, but are easily the biggest single consumers.
Rogers Sugar Ltd. refinery on Burrard Inlet ranked second overall, listed at 928,350 cubic metres in 2007.
Jan With, the refinery's lab and environmental manager, confirmed that the process of refining raw brown sugar imported from Guatemala into the white sugar familiar to consumers is a water-intensive process.
But he argued that the 2007 consumption figure is unusually high, and makes up for a past meter-reading problem that produced a lower than accurate reading. The company typically uses closer to 500,000 cubic metres per year, which still puts the company within the top handful of water consumers.
"We are a large water user," he agreed. "But they're giving us more credit than we deserve."
Rogers would like to reduce its overall water bill, which he said is based on a rate of 63 cents per cubic metre, with the prospect of a five-cent increase per cubic metre next year.
But he argued the company is constrained by restrictions on the amount of suspended solids it can release in its effluent, noting that reduction in the amount of water may only increase the level of suspended solids.
The company, which admittedly uses some older technology in its plant, is discussing a new formula with city officials based on the release of a total volume of solids, he said.
Central Heat Distribution Ltd. on Beatty ranked third at 588,423 cubic metres, followed by Hallmark Poultry Processors Ltd. on Franklin at 497,969 cubic metres.
The Port of Vancouver took fifth and eighth spot with two connections to the water supply - 367,127 cubic metres - on Salsbury Drive, including West Coast Reduction, and 285,086 cubic metres on Renfrew.
The port's total water consumption from all meters on the north shore of Vancouver as well as North Vancouver city and district totalled 1,106,496 cubic metres,
Vancouver General Hospital facility maintenance & operations on West 12th Ave. took sixth spot at 309,018 cubic metres, followed by Canada Place Corp. (including the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre, and The Pan Pacific Hotel) at 287,183 cubic metres, Metro Vancouver's West 51st Ave. water connection to the Iona sewer-treatment plant at 283,559 cubic metres, and Fraser Warehouse Ltd. on Fraser Street at 268,522 cubic metres.
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