Flood damage leads to closure of popular boardwalk
A waterfront bird sanctuary will be even more of a refuge for wildlife with what's expected to be a months-long closure to humans.
Flood-caused damage to the boardwalk in the Maude Roxby bird sanctuary is extensive and there's currently no timetable for repairs.
“The boardwalk won't be usable for the rest of the season,” said Blair Stewart, the city's park services manager.
When Okanagan Lake began rising toward record levels in May and June, the 1.5-hectare sanctuary's long wooden boardwalk was affected in the same way as hundreds of docks along the lakeshore.
“The pilings seem to be OK, but the decking and the railings were significantly damaged by the flood,” Stewart said.
City officials hope the provincial government will help cover the cost of repairing or rebuilding the bird sanctuary's boardwalk.
General practice is for Victoria to pay 80 per cent of a municipality’s repair bills after a state of emergency is declared, as it was with the flooding. The City of Kelowna has not yet tallied up the costs associated with the flood.
Maude Roxby isn’t the only city property still closed as a result of the flood. The Manhattan Point beach access in the downtown north end is closed, because the dock there was destroyed.
The water park in City Park never opened this summer, and the Cascia Linear Park and the Priest Creek Linear Park are also closed.
Originally twice its current size, the bird sanctuary was considered a useless piece of swampy land and was slowly being filled in with garbage, dirt and yard waste before it was preserved as wildlife refuge in 1984.
Some of the creatures regularly seen to frequent the sanctuary, at different times throughout the year, include painted turtles, swans, belted kingfishers, great blue herons, white pelicans, redwing blackbirds, osprey, yellow warblers and kingfishers.