WEST KELOWNA — Despite protest from residents, BC Hydro crews shut off power for much of the day at the Shannon Lake neighbourhood in West Kelowna Sunday.
The issue came to a boil this week after a Shannon Lake resident accosted premier Christy Clark during a press conference. He was demanding BC Hydro delay the outage because it would affect thousands of people — including the elderly — who wouldn’t be prepared to go for eight hours without power or heat.
Many call this an ill-timed, poorly-conceived plan.
“Once again it seems like complete disregard for people and their welfare,” said David Knight an area resident.
The District of West Kelowna had been doing work on sidewalks earlier this year when underground BC Hydro lines were discovered too close to the surface. BC Hydro says fixing the lines is an urgent matter.
“We’ve determined it’s not up to current safety standards it is a public safety and crew safety risk to leave that equipment in,” said Dag Sharman, spokesperson for BC Hydro on Thursday.
Yet the District of Kelowna told us sidewalk upgrades around Shannon Lake were on hold until the spring and in a statement said “the District was in no particular hurry to have BC Hydro complete this work.”
Still work got underway this weekend — and almost 500 homes in the neighbourhood were without power. Another outage is planned for Tuesday.
Perhaps the only saving grace for those staying inside: it’s been considerably warmer over the past few days. It was +3 in West Kelowna Sunday, a week ago it was -11.
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