MESSAGE from the ADMINISTRATOR

Brian Reardon, CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER

Our 51st year of service to Central Okanagan residents was one marked with the substantial completion of some important infrastructure projects. Customers of three water systems should notice improved water quality and reliability thanks to upgrades and improvements which wouldn’t have been possible for the most part without the multi-million dollar support and funding from federal and provincial grants. The Falcon Ridge system has a new intake, control room and reservoir and it’s anticipated that fire hydrants will be installed in 2019 to provide street-side water for firefighters. Additional water capacity is now in service for residents served by the Westshore system as two reservoirs were commissioned in 2018. Construction wrapped up as well during the year on a new reservoir, control room and three kilometers of in-ground mains for customers of the Killiney Beach water system.

With the support of the City of West Kelowna, we completed an almost $5-million expansion of the Westside Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant outfall into Okanagan Lake. This major project will improve capacity at the plant that treats over 10-million litres of wastewater each day from residents and businesses in West Kelowna, Peachland and the Westbank First Nation. As well, we expect to see some substantial savings in electricity costs at the facility!

Thanks to a grant from the Okanagan Basin Water Board/ Okanagan Waterwise program, in 2018 we produced four new videos to help residents understand the small changes that they can make at home to protect our treatment plant and more importantly, our drinking water sources. You can view these at www.regionaldistrict.com/wastewater.

Provincial Disaster Assistance funding was also instrumental in repairing damage caused by the record high Okanagan Lake water levels in the spring of 2017. We were able to leverage those funds to repair damage in and reopen Mill Creek Regional Park. With additional Gas Tax funding, we began repairs and upgrades in Killiney Beach Community Park. We expect to finish repairs to its boat launch and dock during 2019 and anticipate other flood recovery projects to begin in several other regional parks.

Our partnership with Tire Stewardship BC saw a record number of unwanted tires dropped off during our September Tire Collection event as part of our Mosquito Control program. Residents filled a transport truck trailer with almost 1,200 old tires! Just a few centimeters of water inside a tire can result in hundreds of breeding, biting mosquitoes.

And volunteers on several fronts helped us provide several important services and programs. Members of the Gellatly Trails and Parks Society repaired, painted and stained the stairs in Glen Canyon Regional Park. The Friends of Black Mountain / sntsk‘il’ntən Society received grant funding from Mountain Equipment Coop and the TD Friends of the Environment to coordinate construction of the first 800 meters of trail in this new regional park. They stepped up alongside students from Mount Boucherie Secondary, Rutland Senior Secondary and Doctor Knox Middle schools to haul, rake and pack what will be a 1.9-kilometer loop trail in Black Mountain / sntsk‘il’ntən Regional Park. We hope to see that open during 2019. And throughout the year, volunteers from dozens of environmental and recreational groups donated their time and effort through our Volunteers in Parks program and during the annual Community Clean Up activities coordinated by the Regional Waste Reduction Office. To all, a huge thank-you!

Our staff and the new members of the Regional Board are already hard at work to continue delivering the variety of programs and services that residents have come to rely on from the Regional District.

I encourage you to see the work that was completed during 2018 and the initiatives we have planned for 2019 in the following pages of our Annual Review.