Kelowna News

Kelowna's Big White is in the midst of digging a giant reservoir which will have an impact on all aspects of the ski hill.

It's located at the base of the Powder Chair. Once it's finished in two years from now, it will be 320 metres long, 80 metres wide and 10 metres deep. It will hold 66 million gallons of run-off water -- enough to supply the mountain for the next 10 to 15 years.

"It's not that we're running out of water. As part of our master plan we needed two reservoirs," says Big White VP Michael J. Ballingall.

"We already use Rhonda Lake at the bottom of the Cliff and we had to build another one. It took us two years of working with various levels of government to find the right place to dig the hole and they deemed this to be the right place."

In 1990, Big White needed 180,000 gallons of water a day to operate. Today, the mountain consumes about 440,000 gallons a day. That includes some for snow-making at Telus Park.

Digging the reservoir means the removal of 300,000 cubic metres of earth. The person in charge of the massive project says that earth won't go to waste.

Maurice Valcourt says it's being used to smooth out some runs -- mostly on the Gem Lake side of the mountain.

"We're using most of the earth to fill in some of the ravines so we can open the runs earlier. We're also using the earth to manicure some of the runs," says Valcourt.

"Blue Saphire, Black Magic, Black Jack, Kalinas Rainbow, Pot of Gold and Talons Grip to name a few. They've all had work done on them. We haven't really changed the contour of the runs but we've filled in a lot of rock ravines where we used to have to push a lot of snow into them. That means we're looking at 20-30 centimetres before we can open those runs instead of waiting for 70 to 80 centimetres."

Cost of building the reservoir -- $3 million.

It will be called Lake Paul.

Video -- Kelly Hayes

Link: Big White