Thursday, 06 February 2014 09:50
Greater
Vernon Advisory Committee directors have approved a motion to hold a
referendum this fall to borrow up to 70 million dollars for water
projects.Three directors were opposed: Coldstream's Gyula Kiss and Maria Besso and Vernon's Bob Spiers, some with concerns that Interior Health is forcing the region to add filtration to its system, even though it's already good quality, and most of it is used for farming.
Spiers told the committee, he would like to see Greater Vernon residents vote against it, to force I-H to come up with another funding solution.
"If it was so important to be a safety concern, then why are we being allowed not to filter our main plant (Mission Hill) until 2022? It doesn't make sense," says Spiers.
Kiss also recommends people vote against it.
"80 percent of the water produced at Duteau will go to fields, and this is highly treated, filtered water. The cost of that can be up to 45 million dollars a year, just for the treatment," Kiss tells Kiss FM.
Coldstream's Besso has issues with the direction of the master water plan.
"One of the first steps is to build a 110 mega litre filtration plant at Duteau, and still only 6 mega litres in the summer peak will be for domestic use, and the other 104 will be put on (farming) fields," says Besso.
The GVAC motion still has to be approved by the regional district board.
The most expensive project in the master water plan phase 1 is $26.5 million for adding filtration at the Duteau Creek water treatment plant for up to 110 mega litres a day.
The other components are $19.5 million for Lavington system separation of the domestic and agriculture supply, $9.8 million for domestic system distribution investments, $6.4 million for raising the Aberdeen Dam by four meters, $3.5 million for twinning transmission main, and $2.6 million for an Okanagan Lake pump staiton.
Directors decided to take the issue to referendum in November after earlier rejecting a suggestion to hold an alternative approval process.
Pictured: GVAC director Bob Spiers
Before I get crucified for exaggeration let me make a slight correction! It's not $45 million. It's $4 to $5
million (or might be more) a year for filtration. That would include the sum of the annual
borrowing costs for the current DAF treatment plant ($29 million), the
borrowing costs of the proposed filtration plant ($26.5 million), the cost of DAF
treatment and the cost of filtration. These expenditures would only provide about
20% of the total domestic water supply. The rest of the domestic water is supplied by the Mission Hill (Kalamalka) treatment plant at a fraction of the cost. Coldstreamer
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4 comments:
Crazy!
Do I have this correct? Since Duteau provides little domestic supply ( why was it built??) , and Mission Hill provides cheaper water, what is preventing us from meeting medium term needs from Mission Hill (expansion of?); my water tax would be somewhat lower, and I wouldn't be contributing to the "lunacy" of cleaning water to put on fields. How many of the voting politicians are on wells? I want to see a public debate on this topic; I will support no referendum to borrow until I hear some sanity.
Happy your letter got printed in the paper with the facts Gyula. Hopefully enough people with take a good hard look at this and vote appropriately. We will be voting against for sure.
Such poor planning, needless expenses.
There must be an Aesop's Fable that applies to this situation.
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