A new aeration system will pump oxygen into a third of a West Kelowna reservoir to improve drinking water quality.
The upgrade is one of several initiatives designed to avoid a repeat of elevated manganese levels that sparked considerable public concern last summer.
“It will be far more of the reservoir than we are aerating currently,” city engineering chief Rob Hillis told West Kelowna city councillors this week. “It’s over a third of the reservoir.”
Coun. Rick de Jong said: “It’s a huge improvement”.
Plans are for the new aeration system to be installed in the next few months, with another update to council on the overall $2.5 million improvement project in December.
The project has three components: installation of a potassium permanganate treatment system, intake improvements, and upgrades to the aeration system at the reservoir.
The first part of the system is “successfully oxidizing the dissolved manganese prior to it entering the treatment facility,” Hillis says.
When levels of manganese – a naturally occurring chemical – rose beyond set limits last summer, Interior Health did not issue a Do Not Consume order, saying there was no general risk to public health. But use of drinking water from the Rose Valley plant was not recommended by young children or pregnant women.
The episode sparked a long and counting fallout with municipal officials acknowledging they did not properly convey to the public the potential seriousness of the situation.
That failure came on the heels of the massive over-run of the plant’s construction cost, with initial estimates of $50 million far eclipsed before the final bill came in of $75 million.