It’s been a difficult couple of years for B.C.’s wine industry and now a winery in Penticton has hit another bump in the road.
An apparent watermain burst in front of Da Silva Vineyards and Winery, located on Upper Bench Road, over the weekend caused significant damage to their property.
“It’s been two years of unbelievable hardship for many people in the agricultural industries, wineries and farmers. Last year, at exactly this time, we had the fires in West Kelowna, the rock slide that closed the road. That impact was horrendous. Then we had the winter kill event this winter,” said Da Silva Vineyards and Winery owner Richard Da Silva.
“Now we now have the addition of this kind of calamity happened to us. So, you’re a bit shell-shocked. My wife and I are just taking it one day at a time.”
The break forced water to rush underneath Da Silva and out into their vineyards that were just replanted.
Days later, large sinkholes and bumps were visible throughout the crush pad and parking lot. At the same time, rocks and mud were washed out to the back of the property.
“We don’t really know at this point the extent of the damage we’re looking at,” said Da Silva. “We have had geotech engineers on site this morning. We’ll have structural engineers coming in the next day or so.”
According to the city, Penticton is unique in that it has two dedicated water systems. One of the systems is an agricultural raw water irrigation line, which is the one that burst under Upper Bench Road.
“In this situation, we had a 300-mm watermain, which is 12 inches in diameter, and it operates at about 240 PSI. So it was a significant volume of water,” said Penticton Utilities Manager Dave Best.
“The agricultural system operates at a higher pressure because there is no pumping involved, so it has to run at slightly higher pressures in order to feed the water to the various agricultural properties.”
Crews spent hours working throughout the night to repair the line and made preliminary repairs to the road.
“Moving forward, crews will be on site on Wednesday, and we will be excavating any of this saturated material out and prepping for asphalt,” said Best. “We should have it paved by the end of day Wednesday.”
The winery has now been forced to close for the foreseeable future, ahead of what is supposed to be one of the busiest weekends of the season.
“It’s a devastating situation for us,” said Da Silva. “It is literally our busiest time of the year. It’s when we build our coffers for winter months to sustain ourselves. And yet again, this year, another calamity like this.”
Da Silva believes this highlights a need for communities to assess aging infrastructure across the city.
“Main pipes that have been underground now since the 60s, that should have been replaced years ago. These municipalities keep kicking these projects down the road, and the effect is these kinds of disasters,” said Da Silva.
“We will rebuild and come back, but it’s at a horrendous cost to not just us, but our staff and employees and all the people that affect around us and other businesses that we interact with.”
Da Silva says they have received an overwhelming amount of support from the community.
And while the winery rebuilds, Da Silva added that the best way to continue to support the winery is to order online or dine at local restaurants that serve their wine.