Wall keeping lake out of lot – for now

Officials with City of Penticton, yacht club nervously eyeing weather

Picture the thickness of a goodsized phone book and you’ll have a good idea how close Okanagan Lake was Thursday afternoon to overwhelming a concrete wall and flooding a vast expanse of parking lot — maybe more — near the Penticton Yacht Club.

“Once this does breach, where’s it going to go? Nobody knows for sure,” fleet captain Bruce Merit said while taking a break from shoring up the defences already in place.

He and city officials have resigned themselves to the very real possibility the lake will come over the wall. If it does, it’s hoped a barrier of 25 large concrete blocks will keep the rush of water from swallowing up the yacht club’s headquarters.

That barrier has been in place since last weekend, when a breach seemed imminent, but the lake level has actually risen little since then, leaving stormy weather as the main immediate threat.

“Today we have a wind from the south. If it was from the north, we’d probably be in a much worse position than we are now,” said Merit.

“If we get some wave action from a whole day of north wind, we’re going to have bigger waves coming in and that could breach the wall right there.”

Such was the case Thursday afternoon in Naramata, where water overtook a section of Mill Road, cutting off access to 11 homes that were subsequently ordered evacuated.

Meanwhile, there was a spot of good news for residents of Red Wing Resorts, where a soil scientist has determined the spread of groundwater isn’t as severe as initially feared.

“Everything’s fine so far,” said Dale Kronebusch, emergency services supervisor for the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen. “It’s all status quo and we’re just going to keep an eye on it.”

The RDOS, in co-operation with the Penticton Indian band, earlier this week declared a local state of emergency for Red Wing Resorts, where it’s feared groundwater could undermine the silt bluffs to the west of the 350-home community.

A second, more noticeable threat exists in the form of Okanagan Lake, which has prompted construction of sandbag walls to protect the waterfront portion of Red Wing.

Kronebusch said attention will shift today to shoring up sandbag defences in Naramata, followed by areas on the other side of the lake near Summerland.

As of noon Thursday, the lake surface was hovering around 343.24 metres, virtually unchanged since the same time Sunday, according to Environment Canada data.

With the lake expected to stay high for the foreseeable future, the City of Penticton is asking anyone who runs a sump pump to remove groundwater from their basement to ensure it’s discharged outside into a gutter or storm drain, not a sanitary sewer.