The Oliver Water System (the utility) services 2345 residential, 216 commercial and 614 agricultural and industry customers.

A large broken underground pipe (syphon) was damaged by a large rock fall at Gallagher Lake in January. Scaling operations have begun to make the area safe for a construction repair job but scalers have found the area needs a lot of work blasting down large pieces of the rock face that appear to be hollow and weak.

The rock scaling was originally designed to take a couple of weeks so that a contractor could move in and repair the concrete syphon so that water could be diverted at the dam at McIntrye on the usual schedule of April 1st.

The geo-tech engineers and the scaling company now believe this new work could take 8-10 weeks delaying the 3 week construction project. That would put the agricultural water system in jeopardy and if we have a hot dry spring could cause irreparable damage to the industry.

So the Town of Oliver met Thursday to instruct staff that a “quick-fix” must be found to patch the syphon for this season and a long look be made on a more permanent solution in the fall. So that would mean the scalers given about two weeks to make the area safe and the quick-fix be install asap after that.

The quick fix could involve large pipes in the damaged area, a liner, a goo spray to temporarily patch the syphon damage or other ideas being worked on by engineers.

The Town has approved $475 thousand being diverted from reserves to pay for all costs meanwhile Linda Larson MLA is working in Victoria – seeking emergency funding because of the importance of the wine and farming industries.

Geo Tech Engineers – (Golder Associates) were on site this week and reported a column of rock (high up) must be blasted out of place to make it safe for scaling operations below it. The engineers stating that lining the syphon after the large pieces of work are dislodged is possible but with high technical complexity. They also recommend that a look be taken to a long term solution of re-routing the pipe away from the rock fall area but not a reasonable option in the short term.