Photo: Castanet Staff

A five-foot-high wall of sandbags holding back Lower Twin Lake from flooding in June. The road below the sandbags had also been raised by four feet.

An improvement district in the area of Twin Lakes is looking to hand the reins of water management to the Regional District Okanagan Similkameen after managing the area for decades.

Chair of the Lower Nipit Improvement District, Coral Brown, said the LNID has asked the RDOS take over water management in an area.

With a new RDOS board sworn in last week following the election, there has not been discussion by the board as of yet.

“I don’t know how it will be set up. I would think there will be some kind of a commission or a committee, maybe representing all of Twin Lakes-Park Rill. That’s what I’d like to see because we need to work together,” Brown said.

The Lower Nipit Improvement district, which has been around since 1965, around the same time the regional district incorporated, is a group of volunteers and homeowners around the lake who work as a go-between with the province to manage water flow in the area.

The regional district secured provincial funding last week to mitigate immediate flood risk downstream in the Sportsmens Bowl area, which along with Twin Lakes experienced damage from flooding this past spring.

Brown noted the area needs to work together in order to best mitigate future flooding and water management issues.

“If it wasn’t for this improvement district there would be no control on this lake,” Brown said.

Brown said having the regional district manage the area will hopefully bring in more resources to the area like the ability to lobby the province for grant funding.

The restoration of Lower Horn Creek and storage of water to aid in dryer years are two important factors she hopes get attention moving forward.

Brown emphasized the water in the area is on a 20-year cycle with years of drought in the not-so-distant past. As well, much of the “infrastructure” in the area includes the land and older systems like wells.

“We are too basic for people to understand, we have wells and septic fields — we don’t have water systems. Our ‘infrastructure’ is actually the aquifer,” Brown said.

Flooding and water levels in the area is a large issue in scope with many moving parts, Brown said.

“What we will need is a service area for drainage, looking after drainage, basically flood and drought, and areas which would include the Twin Lakes-Park Rill area,” Brown said.

“We need to get it sorted out, it’s not good what’s been happening here and the thing is it’s not good for the environment,” Brown said.