Ron Seymour: Will city residents go with the flow?

The city’s plan to reverse the flow of water in Kelowna is probably going to rub many people the wrong way. Opposition to the idea of drawing from Mission Creek instead of Okanagan Lake might take a while to get going, since it was sort of buried this week in a grand plan to improve water quality. Who could be against that? Well, the 60,000 city residents who currently rely on the municipal system already have clean, safe water at reasonable rates, thanks to the city’s technically expert and financially prudent management of the municipal utility.

As a result, interminable discussions at the political level about the possibility of integrating all the existing Kelowna-area water systems into one big one run by the city probably have had scant interest for those 60,000 people.

But as they start to realize the integration plan calls for a fundamental shift in where they get their water from, expect the issue to gain a greater and greater public resonance.

A resulting wave of opposition could make recent brouhaha over the tourist info centre on Queensway look like small potatoes by comparison.

“Don’t mess with our water!” is surely a more powerful rallying cry than “Protect this parking lot!”

The city had better prepare now for such an eventuality, and figure out a way to politically sell the integration plan, or it risks seeing the whole scheme swamped by public indignation.

A promise, or at least the strong suggestion, that the plan could actually reduce water rates for customers of the municipal utility might be one way the city could navigate any troubled waters ahead.

Reduced operating costs are at least theoretically possible because of the huge expense in pumping lake water up and across Kelowna, as is currently done by the utility.

A consultant’s suggestion, apparently never considered before by those who’ve studied Kelowna water issues, is to instead draw from Mission Creek and let gravity do most of the work.

Upon hearing this idea, many people’s first reaction will probably be, “Huh? How could there possibly be enough water in there to serve the whole city?”

But the creek does carry about one-third of all the water that flows into the lake. And the experts say there is indeed enough capacity there to meet the water needs of homes and businesses, with other creeks used for irrigation.

But capacity is unlikely to be the issue that really gets people talking. That issue would be quality.

Water systems that draw from streams and creeks are subject to seasonal discolouration, most often caused by organic material being swept into the water during snowmelt.

Even with chlorination, resulting tapwater can become murky and unappealing.

Since Interior Health has tightened water quality standards, such seasonal discolorations that used to be taken as a fact of life in many Okanagan communities now prompt quality advisories that have people switching to bottled water for months each year.

Officials say that wouldn’t be a problem in Kelowna, because the lake intakes would remain and could be used during spring run-off.

“We know that in the spring freshet the quality of Mission Creek water declines, so that at least a portion of the year lake water would be used in the system,” consultant Don Stafford said Monday at City Hall. “It’s not as if the pumping infrastructure would disappear, it would just be used in the most judicious fashion.”

The city now zaps water from the lake with chlorine and ultra-violet light to kill pathogens, and, of course, water from the creek would be similarly treated.

But the simple reality is that water drawn at deep levels from a source such as Okanagan Lake is at much less risk of contamination, benign discolouration or otherwise, than is water drawn from a surface source such as a creek.

In fact, the integration plan calls for the existing lake intake pipes to be sunk even deeper, to draw cleaner water for the few months of the year when Mission Creek isn’t suitable to use.

By embracing a plan to switch the water source for 60,000 people from the the lake to the creek, the city risks creating a problem it hasn’t had since the cryptosporidium crisis of the mid-1990s — convincing people what comes out of their taps is always safe to drink.