Janice Casling lives in a rural area of southeast Kelowna where Rumour Creek is spilling over its banks.
Water has overtaken the spring pasture.
“That’s my best pasture,” Casling said. “Those lambs that are in my backyard ought to be in there grazing because I’m out of hay.”
Casling’s neighbour Lucy Ford lives nearby on Matthew Road, where water is literally pouring into her yard.
Three large culverts lead directly from Rumour Creek onto her property.
“It’s just too much for our property to handle,” Ford said. “The driveway is starting to wash away, earth is pulling away from the culverts we have there.”
Next door, Dale Carlson’s mini golf course, which he named Carlson Lake Park, is too much lake — and not enough park.
“More water is flowing into Lucy’s yard, then it’s in my yard,” Carlson said.
The neighbours question why the city built such a big culvert to empty onto Ford’s property.
“It would be really simple to divert the water, break it up. There are culverts in place up the road that could handle a lot of this outflow,” Ford said. “It would make it simpler for everybody.”
But the City of Kelowna says when roads are built, creeks can’t be diverted.
“Yeah, the creek gets the right of way,” Roadways Construction Supervisor Darin Thompson said. “We culvert it and build the road over top.”
The one thing everyone can agree on is that this is an unusually wet and problematic spring so far in the Okanagan.