||| FROM DAN BURKE for EASTSOUND WATER USERS |||
The EWUA Board released a report today in response to an unauthorized and misleading presentation given under the letterhead of Eastsound Water about vacation rental water usage.
The prior report was flawed in part because the study did not differentiate between seasonal residences and full-time residences. Failing to account for the difference in water use between a seasonally occupied residence and a full-time occupied residence gave skewed and misleading results.
“The Board felt compelled to undertake our own study in response to the original report given by our former GM,” said Joe Cohen, Vice President of the Board. “The former report keeps coming up in discussions about the future of housing here on the island. While we have no political interest, we do feel compelled to make sure that the data out there on our water system is accurate.”
“There is no evidence that vacation rentals are using water in excess or inappropriately,” said Tenar Hall, Board member and mathematician. “We have gone through the data extensively and have found no evidence that vacation rentals are having any adverse effects on our water system.”
The Eastsound Water Board’s vacation rental analysis along with a water resources availability report is available to its members online at Eastsound Water Usage Analysis.
[Released and Approved by the EWUA Board]
About Eastsound Water
Eastsound Water Users Association is a service-oriented association who has delivered safe and clean drinking water to its members since 1955. Our service area includes the Eastsound UGA and neighboring communities in town and on Buck Mountain.
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Thank you to the board of ESWUA for taking the time to correct the record. Good data is critical, especially when bad data is being used in meaningful discussions.
If I recall correctly, and the memory is vivid, Paul Kamin was talking about the water usage by EWUA members in July and August — the months of greatest stress on the water system — for which it has to be designed, and which therefore generates corresponding costs that members have to bear. But the current EWUA analysis looks at periods from January through August and April through August — incorrectly called “summer” usage. This is comparing apples and oranges.
Using the current figures from the report for April through August, I get 54%, 34%, and 30% greater usage by full-time residences with vacation rentals for 2019, 2020, and 2021. These numbers could easily increase to 89% for just July and August. Let’s see those figures!
And comparing seasonal vacation rentals with seasonal residences for April through August, I get 357%, 325%, and 235% greater usage for those with vacation rentals.
This is an excellent example of Sloppy Math. I feel the wool is being pulled over our eyes.
Painting Paul Kamin’s work as “unauthorized and misleading” certainly does not pass the smell test. Paul was a dedicated, hard-working, conscientious, and non-political public servant, both for the water district and the EPRC. If someone now has a different interpretation of water data to offer, fine. Then why the political hit-job?
But more to the point, this new report in its own way is even more misleading. What matters to us is the rate of water use on a per-unit-time basis, such as per-day or per-week while a given property is occupied. Eastsound Water has no control over occupancy. The business plan of every VR is to fill the bedrooms as many days as possible, leading into shoulder seasons, Holidays, even February if demand exists. Since the 2018 VR regs failed to limit either occupancy or the proliferation of new permits, VRs still constitute an open-ended liability for Eastsound Water. Yet, as Michael Riordan nicely points out, Eastsound Water would rather apply Sloppy Math.
When I asked him about his analysis right after he presented it at the Vacation Rental Working Group’s public meeting, Paul told me that it wasn’t just extra showers ad toilet flushes that were making the difference. It was also that VR owners would do a lot more watering of lawns and shrubbery to keep their operations inviting and attractive. Especially in July and August, when they get no help from the rains.
Thank you for your comment @Justin. Many hours of analysis went into building this report so we appreciate you recognizing the effort.
@Michael, it is EWUA’s responsibility to ensure that no user class is threatening the integrity of our system and to ensure that our system is healthy. In our study, we examined the data and concluded that no class of residential water users, including those with VR permits, are using water in excess or inappropriately during our peak months, or during the course of an entire year. We have plenty of water for all groups (please see Graphic 5 in the full report) and wanted to make sure that all of our members know that.
We have included the July-August numbers here for your review.
https://eastsoundwater.org/1349-2/
It would be best for Orcasonian readers not to drink the anti-vacation rental Kool-Aid that Michael Riordan and Toby Cooper keep trying to push down their throats! Just stop the lies, hypocrisy, and vilification of good people.
There you go again, Dan, with your usual ad hominem attacks. Aren’t you among those who criticized my warnings in late July to start putting on our masks again when the first few new cases of (soon to be identified as Delta) coronavirus cases began to appear? What do you think of your criticisms now?
People should pay no attention to his remarks, given his track record.
To me, the great value of Paul Kamin’s report was that it showed the excess water usage of short-term vacation rentals in a well-managed system, and it was based upon a reasonable sample of some 40-odd instances. He also spent many hours on that effort. But, yes, he did not disaggregate that sample according to the two classes that Tenar Hall did, so the current analysis improves on Paul’s results. If you look only at the July-to-August numbers, as Paul did, and average over the full three years 2019-2021, you find that there is a 54.8% increase in Full Time Residences with VR Permits and a 244% increase in the other class, Seasonal Residences with VR Permits. If you lump them together, as Paul did, you get an average increase of 99.6% of water usage by vacation rentals in July and August — a full 10.6 PERCENT GREATER than Paul’s result of 89%.
Thank you, Tenar, for contributing to the ongoing discussion of the impacts of vacation rentals on Orcas Island. The numbers you just provided are enlightening.
Michael, an ad hominem attack would be one on your character, motive, or some other attribute of yours, rather than attacking the substance of your argument itself. I mention neither your character nor your motives (I’ll let them speak for themselves), but your argument is deceptive.
As far as the pandemic, my approach was always been to follow science and facts. When I flew back from California to Orcas at the start of the pandemic in early March 2020, we were the only ones on the full flight to be wearing N99 masks. At that time, I supported a mandate limiting ferry travel to emergencies, to be supported by the State Ferries. My statements in July that you’re referring to were also based on the facts at the time. But your warnings at the time came true, so either you’re a good guesser or you have a crystal ball.
People in these islands have known my track record for 44 years and I’ll let it speak for itself. People can take or leave my remarks. And I always wear a mask again when I’m inside public places.
The published EWUA conclusions based on a three year analysis of 2019 – 2021 summer water use should be caveated by the impact of the Covid pandemic on vacation rentals in the spring and summer of 2020. I would think 2020 should be thrown out of the analysis since the data are based on a pandemic year with VR restrictions.
As a professional accustomed to robust statistical analysis, I would not accept any conclusions about water use by VR’s based on such a limited sample size, given pandemic operating conditions. This is a simplistic analysis using debatable time periods, as Michael Riordan observed.
Dan, accusing someone publicly of “lies, hypocrisy, and vilification of good people” is doubtlessly an ad hominem attack, by almost anyone’s standards. I am surprised that the editor allowed it to appear.
I rest my case, and will say no more. Unless you continue your attacks.
It seems to me this analysis needs a harder look. How do you change the conclusions of earlier work? I think Paul Kamin did an excellent analysis based of peak use of water during the peak tourist season in July and August. We need to shepherd our water resource for the future.
After working with Paul on many occasions, including serving on the EWUA board, I always found Paul to be very savvy about all the technical issues regarding our water system, to be operating at a very high level of personal integrity, and to be doing his very best to ensure that our water system delivered a quality product at the lowest and fairest price to all members of the association.
I’m baffled by the EWUA Board and staff’s position that Paul’s work was “misleading”, given in particular, Michael Riordan’s critique of EWUA’s more recent report and the data it’s based upon.
The anti-vacation rental group has touted a scam petition done through change.org that has a very large percentage of made up names and persons that are totally unconnected with the San Juan Islands. Is that deceptive? Of two founding members In this group, one has had a vacation rental for decades, and the other one, who howls about affordable housing, is a slum landlord. Is this hypocrisy? Does this group’s actions encourage feelings of hostility in the community toward local owners of compliant, non-obtrusive vacation rentals? Toby is a member of this group and Michael is an ardent supporter.
Yes, I also worked with Paul, most notably when EWUA was building a large storage tank in View Haven Estates, of which I was then the Vice President. Although we occasionally butted heads on some minor matters, I found that he almost always had good numbers and reasoning to back up his important decisions. For some reason, perhaps political, the current EWUA Board seems to want to besmirch his excellent record because of his analysis of VR water usage.