Valley group petitions against reservoir lots

J.P. SQUIRE Kelowna Daily Courier

Lake Country Mayor James Baker and Kelowna Coun. Brian Given are organizing a Rally for Water and a valleywide petition drive against the sale of 163 recreational leased lots on 20 Okanagan reservoirs. The Rally for Water will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on April 5 at Beasley Park, located on Woodsdale Road in Winfield. “We‘ll have petitions there for people to sign. There won‘t be a lot of speechifying, but if people have questions we‘ll be there to answer them,” said Baker. “We may get into debates with some of the lot owners if they come out to the rally in favour of giving them preferential treatment. Let‘s see how many people think preferential treatment is desirable.” As a first step, the province has proposed selling the 15 leased lots on Crooked Lake east of Winfield, a source of domestic water for Lake Country residents. Baker doesn‘t have a specific goal for the number of signatures on the petition, “but we do plan on moving it up and down the Valley, starting at Lake Country, and see how many bodies we get,” he said. “Every local government has sent in a letter of opposition to the province, all the water purveyors, the Okanagan Basin Water Board and a number of individuals, but I guess the province is just not listening. So we thought if we get a number of signatures as well as our local governments, they might listen to us.”

Provincial officials are spending an “incredible amount of time and effort into explaining what a great deal it is,” he added. “I just don‘t understand where 163 people trump all the water users in the Okanagan.” The province apparently plans to sell the lots at their current assessed value, keep the cash and then turn over the responsibility for them to local governments. Baker notes that if the province follows through with its promise not to create more lots on the Crown land surrounding the reservoirs, the value of the 163 lots will increase and irrigation districts will have to pay those higher prices, possibly in the millions, if they want to increase the size of the reservoirs. His impression is if someone wants to buy Crown land, an application is submitted and it goes to public auction so everyone has an equal opportunity to buy it. However, the province is bypassing that process. He‘s hoping to collect signatures through April and present the petition to the spring sitting of the legislature.

Given noted the city recognized problems with septic systems leaching into Okanagan Lake and has spent millions building sanitary sewers to eliminate them. The city has also spent millions buying lakeshore properties to put them back in the public realm and clean them up, in part to prevent the impact on the lake, the city‘s water supply. “Why would we go and start this process all over again by selling off more lots?” he asked. “The issue is not just the sale of the lots but water quality, what we‘re doing about it and trying to raise the concern around water in general.” A proposed regional district cottage bylaw would allow 1,614 square feet of gross floor area, he said, noting his four-bedroom home on Dilworth Mountain has about 1,200 feet on the main floor and about 600 feet on the second floor – 1,900 square feet total. “It‘s a pretty big house. That 1,614 square feet is only 300 feet less than my house. That‘s not a cottage. Even that (1,614 square feet) to me is too big.”