Three million sandbags have been dispersed across the Okanagan Valley in a mad scramble to fortify the shoreline from the rising Okanagan Lake, but there is no formal plan in place yet to remove them.
Officials said the flood threat isn’t over and residents should keep the sandbags in place while they formulate a safe sandbag disposal strategy.
Some suggest dumping the sand on local beaches. “Right on the beach, but it’s back on the beach because the water’s washed out everything that’s there,” said one man at Red Wing Resort, an area hardest hit by high water in the south Okanagan.
But officials encouraged members of the public to avoid dumping the sand on the beach because it could be contaminated by floodwater and damage the local ecosystem.
However the RDOS said crews sampled the lake and no contaminant thresholds were exceeded.
As far as rural areas with small water systems, “there have been septic tanks that have been overwhelmed or there have been areas where there is lots of effluent from livestock,” said Zoe Kirk with the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen.
The provincial government issued a public information bulletin asking residents to wear gloves and boots to protect themselves from scrapes and potential contaminants while removing sandbags, to not use the sand in playgrounds or sandboxes and that contents should not be disposed of in lakes, rivers, wetlands, floodplains, or parks.
Emergency officials don’t want to overwhelm the local landfills either.
Local governments are in talks with the province to create a formal plan for sandbag disposal.
“Whether they be localized bins, whether they be places for people to load sandbags onto palettes, those are all under discussion,” Kirk said.
In the meantime the public is being asked to avoid the urge to slit open those sandbags.
“We’ve heard rumours of folks wanting to take it off their beach or get on with summer and dump the sand behind buildings and infrastructure, but we haven’t corroborated that,” Kirk said.
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