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North Shuswap water system transferred to regional district

Property owners vote overwhelmingly to have the Columbia Shuswap Regional District take over their water system.

Anglemont Estates’ water woes could end as early as next summer.

Property owners voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to transfer ownership of the Anglemont Water System from current operator Terry Speed to the Columbia Shuswap Regional District.

The poll was open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, May 19 and property owners were asked to vote on two questions: if they were in favour of borrowing $9.8 million to upgrade the system and if they wanted CSRD to take over their water system.

Despite the fact the transfer will cost each property owner $1,300 per year, 219 owners voted in favour while only 33 voted against the takeover by the regional district.

Of the $1,300 annual payment, $650 will be a parcel tax, with $532 going to debt repayment over a 25-year term. As well, the 420 current owners, and anyone else who connects to the new water system, will pay an additional $700 yearly to cover the expenses of maintaining the system and contributing to a reserve fund.

The aging Anglemont Water System has long been riddled with problems, including source, infrastructure and disinfection, and maintenance – problems the Water Management Branch of the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources and Interior Health said must be dealt with to bring it up to current standards.

Operation of the system was taken out of Speed’s hands last year but given back to him when the ministry deemed he had resolved outstanding issues.

In the meantime, Anglemont residents asked CSRD to look at taking over operation of the subdivision’s ailing water system.

“The bottom line is the creek does not supply enough water for the existing 420 property owners, let alone the almost 900 lots that have not yet been connected to the system,” said CSRD Water Services Co-ordinator Terry Langlois in February when the issue went before the board of directors. “There’s lots of issues with it, but that’s the main one, and to deal with that the operators are shutting off portions of that subdivision weekly and daily, depending on water flow.”

Failure to get a $5.2 million grant from the province through the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) in late 2011 means owners of the subdivision’s 1,303 lots will have to bear a much higher financial burden in order to get clean, potable water.

Langlois says CSRD is putting the finishing touches on an application for a $3 million grant this year and says  UBCM officials told him the regional district had asked for too big a chunk of UBCM’s general strategic priorities fund.

The deadline for applications is May 31 but CSRD won’t find out if  they’re successful until late fall. For property owners, the bottom line is that if CSRD gets the grant, they will see a saving of about $160 per year.

In the meantime, Langlois says the first order of business will be to tender out the engineering for the upgrade of the system that will draw water from the lake.

The Anglemont Estates golf course will continue to be fed with untreated creek water for irrigation, thereby reducing the size of the treatment plant.

The process will then go into design, which will be ongoing through the winter, followed by tendering out for construction.

“If all goes according to plan, we’ll be hitting the ground in spring of 2013,” he says, noting CSRD will be working with Speed to organize transfer of the water system. “Once we take over at the end of July or thereabouts, we do have emergency repairs to do – urgently required work that we’ll do when we take over.”

Disappointment –  not delight, is Speed’s reaction to last Saturday’s referendum results.

“The system was my little baby, but I guess I didn’t raise it too well,” he said Wednesday, noting that when he was first forced to give up the system, he was at his lowest ebb and had fines hanging over his head.  “The whole thing is that, as a private utility, I was not able to go and get an interim rate increase, not able to hire anyone so, in the end, I gave up the keys.”

Speed says the province handed operation of the system back to him because he was the only one who knew how to run the utility.

“It’s hard to run the system from the capital. They had someone from Vernon, but you need to be on hand,” he says. “It was my system, it’s running smoothly, everything’s running tickety-boo, but it still needs the money to do the improvements.”

Speed continues to own and operate three other North Shuswap water systems – Celista, Lucerne and View, and with one annual increase approved, says he now has the money to maintain them properly.

“I hated to lose this one, but I’ll shake myself off, learn from it  and move on,” he says. “I gotta make sure the improvements and preventive work are done.”