Hard-boiled test to West Kelowna water

DEAR EDITOR:

It is unfortunate you did not get a different perspective with regards to water quality in West Kelowna, in your story refencing the mayor of West Kelowna’s comments.

In late 2022 there was an article about the mayor and council’s strategic priorities and one of the was the Rose Valley water treatment plant.

As one who has been involved in billions of dollars’ worth of projects as either the project manager or part of the project team, I questioned the mayor and his council as to what value they could add to a project which was already well underway, already had multiple delays, and was well over budget.

My experience is that if the project manager can’t get it done on-time and on-budget, figureheads such as corporate executives or city councils that have no project management expertise certainly will not get it done.

As a mayor and council who preach that they want citizen feedback, the feedback was ignored as they typically do on any type of feedback including basic omissions or errors.

Shortly after sending my comments in we had a boil water advisory in late December 2022.

The notification was with a small sign on the road indicating the boil advisory notice which on many occasions was not legible because it was covered with snow. With the assistance of a city employee,

I was able to find the link buried in the city website and also signed up for their notifications.

After about a week the sign was not visible but a notice that the water advisory had been rescinded had not been received.

I changed my whole home water filter about a week after the advisory was lifted and the filter was immediately filled with debris since the system was obviously not clean, even after all that time without an advisory.

I reviewed the boil-water advisory and was surprised as to the poor quality and the lack of basic information normally found on notices, following the guidelines of the Canadian governmentl.

The advisory should answer the 10-15 questions which a normal resident should be informed on.

My comment to the city was to copy other municipalities’ more competent advisories, since theirs was, in essence, a boil mud advisory.

Water advisories seem to be a normal occurrence, and I know that there is at least one currently. Completion of a water treatment plant will not eliminate all the water advisories.

In summary: The issues expressed by the mayor were well known before the 2022 priority document was written and more so in December 2022 when the article was written. The issue is now reframed.

Water quality has been a huge issue and will continue to be an issue regardless of the quality and reliability of any new water treatment plant since all failures do not occur at the plants and some are due to new tie-ins, segment replacements or new construction.

Water quality is a health and safety issue, communication should be more than a small sign on the ground and documents written should have technical merit and be written to ensure that the resident knows all the implications.

A proper document will address that a boil-water notice can result in boil mud and that may not be something that one may want in their food.

One would expect that the members of the local Board of Trade would be interested in knowing what steps they need to take in serving the public when there is a water issue.

Unfortunately the mayor targets organizations for presentations that don’t ask the hard questions and, as such, the journalists should be asking why the half-full glass is dirty, and what is he doing about it. Reno Barillari, West Kelowna