Peachland’s ugly boulders may be moved

Peachland’s public beaches, disÀgured in places by hastily-dumped boulders during a flooding emergency, can be made attractive and usable once again, town council was to hear this week.

Some of the large rocks are to be moved from the town’s crescentshaped bay and other, more visually-pleasing strategies will be employed to protect the waterfront from future high-water events.

“This plan will re-purpose the existing rip-rap in some locations and involve the addition of rip-rap and other treatments in other areas,” community service director Cheryl Wiebe writes in a report to town council.

The beautiÀcation project is seen as a multi-year plan to be implemented as funding is available.

Still, the endeavour will likely be welcomed by those who saw the dumping of the large boulders on the Beach Avenue waterfront in June 2017, as Okanagan Lake rose to unprecedented levels, as a perhaps necessary but unsightly undertaking.

“They’re just really ugly. I hope we can get them gone,” Mayor Cindy Fortin said of the boulders in July 2017.

The rocks were intended to blunt the force of waves, which had begun to erode parts of a popular multi-use waterfront path.

“It was a decision that had to be made quickly based on an engineer’s advice,” Fortin said.

Given the haste of the boulder-dumping project, many of the large rocks were “unable to be installed correctly,” Wiebe wrote in her report. But the provincial government delayed ordering the removal of the rip-rap until an overall beach restoration plan could be devised.

That plan, among other things, calls for the use of logs, landscaping features, and small retaining walls to protect the beach from future erosion. As well, direct public access to the beach should be ensured no less than every 170 metres by moving apart the boulders in places where they are deemed necessary.

In a separate report, council is advised the total cost of Àxing up Peachland’s Áood-battered shoreline and waterfront infrastructure will be more than $821,000. Of that, 80 per cent of which will be covered by the province, putting the town’s share at $164,000.