Stakeholders Advisory Committee Finalized

Posted on 9/18/2015 by Ron Manz 107.5 KISSFM
The Greater Vernon Water Stakeholder Advisory Committee has been chosen. The Regional District of the North Okanagan finalized the committee Wednesday night. It is comprised of 18 people from the local community representing agriculture, commercial, industrial and 7 residential users along with GVAC chair Juliette Cunningham and vice-chair Jim Garlick. David Sewell, the CAO of RDNO, says their goal now is to create a new master water plan for Greater Vernon. "It's not an attempt to silence critics, it's to engage and walk through in a reasoned manner what we've done, what we haven't done and why the master plan is where it is, and if we have to make amendments we'll consider those things too." Sewell says creating a new master water plan will take input and conciliation on everyone's part. "Everybody's got an interest in water. Everybody has valuable input and we've got to make sure we capture that relative to their use of water, the importance of water and also trying to get the people who haven't had an avenue to directly engage into the master water plan up until now." Sewell adds the committee will work alongside GVAC chair Juliette Cunningham and vice-chair Jim Garlick to develop a new master water plan. "At the end of the day the political decisions will still be made at the Regional District but this will allow input as to where people feel additional work needs to be done, options, or there feels to be additional technical information that needs to be provided. That's the intent of this committee." The first meeting of this new committee is set for October 1st.