Water is city’s biggest challenge
With a diverse range of issues facing one of the fastest-growing cities in the province, the item that comes up first is really the biggest challenge facing West Kelowna.
As spring runoff continues and water-quality advisories pop up in the like pesky dandelions, West Kelowna Mayor Gord Milsom told guests at a Westside Board of Trade breakfast Wednesday the Rose Valley Water treatment plant is council’s No. 1 priority.
According to Milsom, the $75-million water treatment plant is now expected to be finished in the fall.
Once complete, the approximately 50,000 square foot treatment plant will deliver about 70 million litres of water a day, with a future expansion capacity of 115 million litres.
The new plant will provide clean water to over half of West Kelowna.
While the water-treatment facility currently serving the Rose Valley and Lakeview Heights areas has chlorine as a single barrier treatment, the new plant will offer four barrier treatment, using a type of technology similar to the Powers Creek Water treatment plant built in 2007.
West Kelowna had initially hoped the Rose Valley Water Treatment Plant would be online in the spring.
The culprit, Milsom said, was COVID-19. A pandemic-related labour shortage meant contractors had a difficult time getting full crews to the project site.
As well, the project had supply chain issues, including one large piece of equipment being shipped from Sweden to North Korea in error before finally arriving in West Kelowna.
Milsom, in his State of the City address, acknowledged the frustration of residents over the seemingly endless water advisories and notices.
“I thank residents for their patience while there’s these boil water notices and water quality notices,” he said. “But soon we’ll have clean water.”
According to Allen Fillion, West Kelowna’s director of engineering
and public works, the city is concerned about flooding this spring. Teams from the city who measured the snowpack in the Powers Creek basin around the end of April to early May found the it was about 155 per cent above normal.
Co-operative weather has helped keep the flooding risk down.
While West Kelowna is looking good as far as flooding goes, the city is not out of the woods for water-quality advisories.
Mission Creek, which is roaring right now, lets out directly across from West Kelowna’s intake for the Sunnyside water system, impacting the water quality for the Sunnyside system, which is currently on a water quality advisory due to an increase of freshetrelated turbidity in Okanagan Lake.
West Kelowna Estates is also under a water-quality advisory.
Beyond water issues, the new West Kelowna city hall and library complex has also been delayed, Milsom said, and is expected to open in November after the new water Treatment Plant.
Once the city has moved into the new hall, the Mount Boucherie complex, where city administration is currently set up, will return to community use.
West Kelowna has received $3 million for 80 new childcare spaces, in conjunction with BGC Okanagan (formerly the Boys and Girls Club), which will be built at the revived Mount Boucherie community site.
Like other communities in the Central Okanagan, West Kelowna’s population continues to grow.
Milsom estimated that by 2040 the city’s population could be as high as 60,000. With up to 20,000 new residents by 2040, West Kelowna will need 8,000 additional homes in the next 17 years.
To get there, council is looking at higher density in the Westbank Centre, allowing six- to 12-storey. Infill, such as secondary suites, carriage homes and smaller lot sizes in traditional neighbourhoods are being considered.
West Kelowna continues to lobby the provincial government regarding congestion snarling the highway and the elimination of the couplet that fractures the heart of Westbank Centre.
The Central Okanagan Integrated Transportation Strategy proposes removing the couplet and putting both directions of the highway on
one of current couplet roads.
Dobbin Road, currently the northbound portion of the highway, seems to be the best candidate to become the highway road.
Main Street would become a local road.
Removing the couplet is important both from an economic development as well as a quality-of-life point of view, said Milsom, adding it would bring Main Street back to a walkable environment.
West Kelowna also wants to eliminate some of the stop lights on the highway for safety reasons as well as for the flow of traffic.
“It’s going to cost a fair amount of money for those improvements and we’d like to see money spent here as well as it being spent on the coast and the Lower Mainland,” said Milsom.