During the most intense days of the McDougall Creek wildfire, protecting the Rose Valley Water treatment facility quickly emerged as a key objective.
As flames ravage area neighbourhoods and licked the perimeter of the $75-million facility, its fate hung in the balance. It was with great relief West Kelowna’s fire chief announced that the plant had been saved, though there were consequences that haven’t all been worked out just yet.
“There is impact to the project timelines,” said Allen Fillion, West Kelowna director of engineering and public works.
“The direct impact, obviously, is the site was evacuated for nearly two weeks, and that’s the same situation for our transmission mains project, which is the large diameter pipes to connect to the treatment plant.”
The larger impact, however, was on the city’s water utility as a whole.
“Our utility teams are very actively involved in the commissioning process of the plant and the tie-in work for the transmission mains and the disinfection of those mains and everything else,” Fillion said.
“As the water purveyor, we’re ultimately responsible for the health and safety of our residents. We have to be actively involved in the process. And of course what happened with the wildfire… our utility teams have been fully tasked with recovery work for the last three to four weeks and haven’t been able to support the specifics of that project.”
Fillion said they’ve been working hard to recover from the “do not consume order” that the city utility had put out and that has been weeks worth of work.
“A do-not-consume order is not something that happens very frequently. I don’t think it’s ever happened in West Kelowna’s history,” he said, adding the loss of homes in the area put the water system at greater risk.
Once an order has been triggered, Fillion explained, it sets off a fairly involved process with testing. It takes time to come off of it, and it was done for good reason.
Fillion also noted that technicians said they know there’s been additional sediment pulled into the system.
“That’s one of the questions that we don’t have a full understanding yet of how much that impact is,” he said. “So, we’ve quickly commenced flushing again in anticipation of bringing a plant online. But, of course, flushing is a procedure (in which) we’re limited by the weather. So, we’ll only be able to go as long as the weather will allow us this fall.”
Fillion also noted that much of the area around the Rose Valley reservoir was badly burnt, forcing the city to bring in a contractor to begin reseeding work to minimize the impacts of the wildfire. A geotechnical engineer has also been brought in to look into both water quality and drainage concerns.
Ultimately, however, he said that fall is still when the plant should open.
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