West Kelowna residents connected to the $75-million Rose Valley Water Treatment Plant have been dealing with brown, smelly water pouring from their taps for months due to higher-than-normal levels of manganese that the city says wasn’t being adequately treated.
“Have we had any complaints about dirty water? Yeah. It is an old water system and in old water systems? You do have chances of dirt coming into a home. We’re doing continual flushing of that water system,” said West Kelowna Chief Administration Officer Ron Bowles.
During a meeting Tuesday, council voted to accelerate a $2.5-million budget to upgrade a failing aerator system in the Rose Valley Reservoir.
“The aeration changes the cycles of the water. It keeps the manganese at the bed of the lake and not have the manganese come into solution and come into our system,” said Bowles.
But after months of questionable water, some are skeptical.
“It’s that what if: What if it doesn’t work? What is their next step? What are their future plans?” said Rose Valley resident, Olivia Lawson.
“I’m concerned that at this point we’re just going to make more mistakes, spend more money without really knowing what the outcome will be,” said Rose Valley resident Scott Beaton.
“We heard from the source water expert in that meeting as well that the aeration is going to help but we don’t exactly know how helpful it’ll be.”
The city says this step was always part of the plan, but not this soon.
“As we started to see more and more manganese come into our source of water we did budget to do this but in 10 years from now,” said Bowles.
“But given the problems we had this year, we said we’re going to accelerate that.”
Also at Tuesday’s council meeting, council turned down a $50 credit distribution to affected residents which is an an estimated cost of $425,000.