To the Editor,

In the lame District newsletter in our mailboxes this past week, we were informed that Bylaw 157 is not a new tax, but is a parcel tax for North Lillooet residents only.

Well that's exactly the point isn't it? It's not a frontage tax and so I demand repayment of this tax back to the point when the two water systems started being treated as one system because from then on this cost should have been absorbed by the whole system (and paid off completely).

That it is treated as all one system is proven on the very next page of the same newsletter; check it out: Dickey Creek water is currently being used to dilute the arsenic water from the REC Centre well (blending means diluting and the Ratepayers have already exposed the myth of blending, do you know about it?)

So if the main part of town is using Dickey Creek to make arsenic-rich water legal to distribute, then I would call that a pretty essential component of the "one" water system, wouldn't you? Basically it means that you need the Dickey Creek water infrastructure and have needed it for many years, at least until the interconnect went in, but possibly longer than that. Sue them. They cannot charge us that parcel tax and a water utility bill.

Furthermore, if the creeks are clearly essential to the water system (to deal with arsenic well water) and the creeks are to be incorporated into the final water system as backups anyway, then why is improving the creek storage capacities and intakes not Phase #1 of this $10 million plan? And at what point is the District going to address the treatment of arsenic? Such treatment is expensive and will still be necessary eventually.

As a final thought about consultants' reports, remember that when TRUE Consulting met with the town in the gymnasium in 2009, I asked their representative if they could have provided us with a Water Conservation Plan that met higher government requirements but did not include water meters. They answered that of course they could have, but they were not asked to do that.

So if the District is instructing its own consultants on what to conclude, can it really be said that the water issue has been "studied to death?" And when all the District ever has to say is "Sorry, it's already a done deal," can it really be said that there was public input on the project?

Daniel Jordi