Latest water disruption an 'anomaly' in Osoyoos, as town battles ongoing water woes

After a power outage on Saturday led to a widespread boil water notice and water quality advisory in Osoyoos, the town's mayor says there is clearly more work to be done to address water issues.

The town has long been plagued with water issues, including reportedly high manganese levels and aging infrastructure that will require an expensive fix.

But mayor Sue McKortoff said what happened this past weekend was a bit of “an anomaly," just the latest problem the water system has displayed.

The power outage led to the 340-booster water station running dry, and other related hardware malfunctioning.

“Once that was discovered, things got started to be fixed again by public works, but it was due to a malfunction of the hardware that was used for the backup battery generator that did not click on again, and it wasn't noticed for a few hours, which is why there was the drop in the water,” McKortoff said.

“As soon as that was noticed, things were updated, but because the water had stirred things up as it dropped and stirred up the stuff on the bottom, then some people certainly did find brown water. To protect the safety and the health of people in the area, we had to issue a town water notice.”

Some residents reported brown and discoloured water pouring out from their taps again over the weekend.

"The town has flushed through all the lines and a couple of people that I talked to had turned on their water in their house when they noticed the brown water and they had let the water run for a while and that cleaned it out. We hope that will happen in many places."

McKortoff added that the notice and advisory issued are standard for when this occurs as mandated by Interior Health.

“We do lots of testing all week long, but it has to be sent and be tested. As soon as it comes back clear, then we can take the boil water advisory off.”

At this time, the mayor said the town doesn’t now how or why it happened.

“Definitely one of the things we need to look at is doing backup generators and that kind of thing for these pump stations and our water storage units because we can't have this happening again,” she added.

“It certainly proves, I think, that we need to really look at all of our water issues very carefully and figure out where do we have some gaps in the system, that maybe we need to spend a little more money making sure that we are up to date with booster generators because if we don't, who knows what could happen again.”

Just a few weeks ago the town was on a water advisory due to a separate incident involving one of the fire hydrants on Main Street that had to be used for a house fire.

“So that stirred up the sediment, which we have in that fire hydrant. For that reason, we have to make sure that we advise people that if they have a concern that they should be boiling their water. So as soon as the testing came back on that, that was lifted,” McKortoff said.

Some of the issues related to the most recent water quality problems will be addressed in Thursday evening’s special open budget meeting.

“The update on the booster station and the storage unit, those couple of things are in the budget, which we had planned to update. So maybe it's more essential than ever that we get those updated now,” McKortoff said.

“In a sense, it's been fixed… We have to wait for the budget to allow more further fixes on there. But what we're waiting for now is to have the water come back, after being tested, with the all clear, and then we can take off the boil water advisory.”

Notable large capital project line items in the upcoming proposed budget include a combined $6.8 million for projects related to wastewater improvements, including for odour control at the wastewater treatment plant, and $15.6 million for various water system infrastructure needs.

Currently, testing is underway at Cottonwood Park to assess the area’s suitability to build further wells and where the town can put in a water treatment plant.

Minister of Municipal Affairs Anne Kang visited Osoyoos and announced in the summer that the province, along with the Department of Finance, agreed to partially fund their water treatment plant to the tune of $9 million.

“When we put in a water treatment plant, we want to make sure that we put in the right type of plant, dealing with the right information and that's why we're going through all of these studies to make sure we get the correct information,” McKortoff said.

“We also have to dig two new wells because we don't have enough wells to deal with the increase in population, because that seems to happen all the time, and an increase in housing, [since] the ministry has said we are required to put in more houses and more densification. That means we need more water, and more sewer, and more upgrades. So everything has a consequence and everything is important."

“We know that water issues in this town are a big priority and we're certainly looking at them, and [Thursday] night, we're going to have a public budget meeting where people can listen and they can hear the debate on which items in the budget we should continue to deal with, maybe some of them will be adjusted.”

Council will be holding the special open meeting for budget deliberations at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 15, at the Sonora Community Centre Gymnasium.

“This is the time for council to look at issues, ask questions of our administration and our staff, and decide whether it's important that we move forward with that, and how much money we spend on it."