Todd Conway, the director of community services for the District of 100 Mile House, told council that well redevelopment could take up until 2026 during an infrastructure update given to council on Sept. 10.
This comment came as Conway updated council on infrastructure within the district during September's first regular council meeting. Conway primarily focused his report on the well redevelopment that the district has been proceeding with since August when low water levels were detected in the reservoir. Conway told Coun. Donna Barnett the redevelopment included taking the well offline among other actions.
"Pull pumps, piping, flushing, camera - all the wells work with - cleaning of the wells, testing of the wells, and then most important in our plants that has to be disinfected - and then all of the disinfectant has to be taken out of the system," Conway explained.
While Conway hopes the well redevelopment will be complete by the end of 2025, he said it realistically could be ongoing until 2026.
Conway reported they are working with Western Water - a Vernon-based water consultancy company - to put together a tender to hire a company to fix the wells. The company has already put out a proposal to three different drilling companies including Robbins Drilling and Pump, Precision Service and Pump and Drillwell Enterprises. The three have until the end of the first week of October to submit bids for the project's tender.
"Unfortunatley, what we've discovered with this, we'll need to do the redeveloping every three years," Conway also noted, citing the fact that wells are being plugged up with carbon.
Mayor Maureen Pinkney told the Free Press that if the corrosion has built up significantly, redeveloping the wells would become part of the water system's constant operational maintenance.
"Even if we start drawing from the creek, we are still going to have to use well water and put them together - but that corrosion will keep going whether we are solely dependent on those wells," Pinkney said.
The creek she is referring to is Bridge Creek which needs to be treated for biological contaminants because it runs through farmlands. Council is considering the use of Bridge Creek as a water source again and mixing the water from the creek with the water from the wells to soften it and reduce the strain on the town's infrastructure. This would require the construction of a new water mixing plant, amongst other investments by the district.
Conway noted that since August when water restrictions were implemented, there has been a reduction in water consumption by around half, Before the restrictions the district used, on average, around 1,800 cubic litres of water per day which has been down to 800 cubic litres of water per day over the last few weeks.
"We're not getting chlorine residue because we're just not using the water. So it's 1.6 million litres with the restrictions we have on now," stated Conway.
District council thanked Conway for the updates provided regarding the situation.
Pinkney said that residents should still abide by water restrictions in the meantime.
