New water treatment plant awaiting site selection, OK
City staff report says B.C. regulatory approval for site for $49-million project could take 2 years
Planning for West Kelowna’s new water treatment plant is moving at a glacial pace.
The site for the $49-million plant hasn’t even been selected yet, more than a year after the project was approved.
“Progress has been slower than expected due to several factors,” reads part of a staff report going to council today.
The main hiccup has been the drawn-out process to identify a suitable location for the plant, the largest project ever undertaken by the City of West Kelowna.
Officials from the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources said in mid-December it could take a long time before regulatory approval for a site on Crown land is given.
“The ministry has advised issuing a licence of occupation will take from 140 days to two years!” the report states, the use of an exclamation mark an unusual aspect to a staff report and one that clearly indicates municipal frustration with the long wait time.
Engineering work is underway, but construction cannot start until site approval is given. Some surveying and geotechnical work is possible.
If site approval is received within the next month or so, plans are to then tender and award the building contracts with a projected finish date of March 2020.
The plant will eventually provide clean, safe, clear drinking water to 18,000 people in neighbourhoods such as Lakeview Heights, West Kelowna Estates and several lakefront communities, as well as 300-plus businesses and seven schools.
Provincial and federal funding totalling $41 million for the new water-treatment plant was announced last March. It will provide multi-barrier treatment processes including flocculation, sedimentation, filtration and chlorination.
Currently, water from the Rose Valley reservoir is treated only with chlorination. Large parts of West Kelowna were under a boilwater advisory for almost four months in 2016 because of an algae bloom at the reservoir.