Large Lakes Water Study

Greater Vernon Water says they haven't performed water tests on Okanagan Lake.

While that stance suits GVW's goal of maintaining the current water sources -- Duteau Creek (called Duteau Slough by the public) and Kalamalka Lake -- Kelowna residents receive their water predominantly from Okanagan Lake at costs considerably lower than ours (almost one-third of the rates we pay for water).

However, Vic Jensen of the Ministry of Environment began a long-term study that focused on Skaha, Osoyoos and Okanagan Lakes.  It showed very high phosphate loading in the 1970s, prompting governments to enforce stricter pollution prevention regulations.  By 2006, water quality had vastly improved.

The Large Lakes Study is available here.

The recently announced formation of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee is the fledgling group of mostly uninformed, non-technical people whose job it will be to "review" the 2012 Master Water Plan and provide input on options for the future improvements to the GVW system.

How about the Master Water Plan's present flaws?
Obviously not within their mandate.
But that doesn't mean they can't discuss it.

They will hopefully seek answers to questions why Okanagan Lake--by its omission--produced a flawed Plan.  But GVW is loading the dice by requesting this non-technical group "determine if the objectives, development and recommended direction in each of the (10) Technical Memoranda of the 2012 MWP corresponds with stakeholder and community perspectives."

And GVW won't permit anyone who was involved in the development of the 2012 MWP to participate on the SAC committee.

Yet the opposite applies for selected advisors, all of whom are "technical" and were instrumental in developing the MWP:  AECOM, the consultant author of the 2012 MWP, and engineering staff.

Geologist Maria Besso advises that Okanagan Lake has a 52.8 year residence time and a huge volume (24.6 cubic kilometres), it is also very deep and has up to 750 meters of glacial gravels deposited in places, as detailed further here in Wikipedia. 

 

By contrast, adds Maria, the Aberdeen Plateau lakes feeding the Duteau Creek source are nothing more than shallow puddles that have almost as much annual water license allocated to them as their entire storage capacity.

The 25-page  2012 MWP Technical Memorandum #2--one of 10 which the SAC group will review--is sadly lacking in any deep discussion about the great differences in the quality and quantity of the source waters, she noted.

 

Here is all it says:

 

"AECOM, Associated Engineering, Kerr Wood Leidal Greater Vernon Water 2012 Master Water Plan TM2_GVW_Eval_Wss_Final_Feb 26, 2013.Doc 2 2.

Background 2.1

GVW Water Supply Characteristics Duteau Creek and Kalamalka / Wood Lake are the primary drinking water sources for GVW. Although both are surface water sources, each have very different water resource characteristics as it pertains to the water utility. Water from the Duteau Creek source is collected and drawn from an upland (plateau) watershed and associated lakes, which serve as reservoirs. Kalamalka / Wood Lake is a valley-bottom lake and source water includes contributing surface water and groundwater (Clarke GeoScience 2011). The hydrologic regime of the Duteau Creek watershed is dominated by snowmelt and therefore, snow pack depth and timing of snowmelt dictate the supply status of upland reservoirs. Snow pack depth reaches the maximum in late March, early April, while snowmelt starts to fill the reservoirs after this date. Historical data indicates that by the middle of May, the seasonal snow pack is generally gone. This date represents the tail end of the snowmelt season. In normal years; the reservoirs would be nearing capacity by June. After this time, water supply is dependent on precipitation inputs. The summer period also corresponds to the period of peak irrigation demand, with maximum consumption between mid-July and mid-August. In the summer, because stored water is being consumed at a rate that far exceeds inflow, reservoir levels start dropping. Kalamalka / Wood Lake, due to its large storage capacity and long turnover rate is much less susceptible to the annual variations in snow pack depth. Besides Upper Vernon Creek, Oyama Creek, and Coldstream Creek, abundant groundwater springs provide source inflows to Kalamalka / Wood Lake."

Separate links to Technical Memoranda 1 through 10 are here. 

GVW's prerequisite for an independent review committee

 "There ought'a be a law," offers Kia, "against loading."

Not at GVW.