Ron Seymour 2010-11-22 Kelowna Daily Courier:
At least one West Kelowna family won‘t have to go to the bathroom in their RV for too much longer. The expansion of the sanitary sewer system is progressing through neighbourhoods where there has been a history of serious problems with septic fields. Some have failed completely and can no longer be used. "I‘m aware of at least one family who‘ve been going to the bathroom in their RV, then having to drive it away regularly to empty the tank," West Kelowna Mayor Doug Findlater said Sunday. "They‘ve had to do that for about a year." Other families, Findlater said, are paying more than $1,000 to empty their failing septic tanks as often as four times a year. About 500 more homes are now being added to the sanitary sewer system in West Kelowna. The provincial and federal governments directed $5.5 million towards the project, using infrastructure funds that were initially supposed to go to the Victoria-area community of Oak Bay. But that municipality chose earlier this year to delay a sewering project because of rising costs. Okanagan-Coquihalla MP Stockwell Day and Westside-Kelowna MLA Ben Stewart then approved transfer of the federal and provincial funds to the sewer project in West Kelowna.
Another 1,000 homes in West Kelowna will be added onto the sewer system once the current project is completed by the March 31, 20011, deadline for the use of the federal-provincial funds. Each residential property owner is paying about $8,400 toward the overall cost of the sewering project. But they also have to pay to tie in their own home‘s plumbing system to the street connections, and that cost can vary between a few thousand dollars to $20,000, depending on the lot‘s size and topography.Once the two projects are complete, virtually all of the urban residential areas in West Kelowna will be on sanitary sewers. Only large lots in rural areas, or those on the fringes of the municipality, will continue to rely on septic systems for the foreseeable future.
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