Barkley Road Water Extension
Information Page

This site has been created to disseminate information to the petitioners of the Barkley Road water extension. With so many property owners being absentee owners and a lack of information being passed to the petitioners by the District of Lake Country it was felt this would be the best vehicle to keep everybody as up to date as possible. The magnitude of the discrepancy between what the petitioners signed on to and the end result to date necessitates a need for people to be informed. Since it became evident that serious problems were developing with the process to bring municipal water down Barkley road pertinent information has been documented and linked to from our articles page.

A Brief History

In spring of 2001 the residents along Barkley Road who did not have water approached the District of Lake Country to find out how they would go about bringing water down Barkley. The District of Lake Country said they would help the residents through the process, but warned the petitioners that it was important The District of Lake Country was involved in the whole process and costing to make sure everything was done properly, so the end result of a successful water-line along Barkley Road would happened. The petitioners, relying solely on the expertise and guidance of Lake Country, began to do the leg work to put everything together.

The first step was to find out how much it would cost. The District of Lake Country told the petitioners to go out and get an engineer's estimate. East Side Utilities was contacted, along with a large contractor who had installed several water systems within the Okanagan to get some initial numbers. These numbers were then supplied to Pilling and Associates who was familiar with East Side Utilities and had knowledge of the area. Pilling and associates came out and looked over the area and came back to the petitioners with cost adjustments and supplied a map of the area showing all the adequate elevation areas a reservoir could go to supply proper fire flows. These numbers and the map were supplied to Randy Rose, who then felt it would be wise to get an engineering firm they were working with to confirm Pilling and Associates' numbers. A meeting was arranged between Carmen Stanek, Randy Rose, Ched Gaglardi and Mould Engineering to review the numbers. Randy never showed up at the meeting but it went ahead anyway. Mould engineering commented that "...the numbers are certainly in the ball park, but if you want a full costing done it would cost $5,000..." The petitioners agreed with The District of Lake Country, relying on the District of Lake Country as an expert in these matters that the number of $662,400 was firm enough to build the water extension to municipal standards.

The District of Lake Country then drew up the specified area documents for the petitioners to get adequate signatures. On May 8th, 2002 The District of Lake Country certified the sufficiency of signatures on the petition to proceed. On March 18th, 2003 The District of Lake Country awarded to Associated Engineering the contract for the preliminary design of the water system at a budget of $10,000.

Although the petitioners were told they would have input into the preplan and have it gone over with them before it went to council, the preplan went to Council in September of 2003 with a new cost of 1.07 million. Up $407,600, putting it 61.9% over the figure The District of Lake Country had accepted as sufficient. A letter was sent to the petitioners asking them if they wished to re-petiion for the 1.07 million dollar amount, and a public meeting was called a few weeks later to appease the promise to meet before the numbers went to Council. At the public meeting The District of Lake Country would not stand behind the 1.07 million dollar number and retracted it as a number the petitioners could use to repetition for. The District of Lake Country further said they did not want to do any water works until a master water plan was done for the Carr’s Landing area. The petitioners expressed concerns with the potential new costs and many felt the new study did not address their wishes and was not to their benefit. Reluctantly, the petitioners suggested in a letter of October 23rd another option for The District of Lake Country to consider that they believed fit with what the District of Lake Country would be willing to do.

On February 10th The District of Lake Country passed third reading of a parcel tax to charge the petitioners for the preplan in the amount of $16,634.69 - over by $6,634.69 of the $10,000 budget given to Council and the petitioners for the preplan. A over-budget amount of 62%. The petitioners were not advised of any of this by The District of Lake Country and found out about it only by reading Council updates in the Calendar Newspaper. On March 9th, 2004 the parcel tax was adopted by Council. This was when the petitioners found out that the additional 62% over-budget amount of $6,634.69 was done because The District of Lake Country thought they had some information that they did not about East Side Utilities and commissioned a full study be done on East Side Utilities. To this date the petitioners do not know how the $6,634.69 over-budget amount was approved, who approved it, why the petitioners (or Council?) were not consulted, but do know council has now approved it to be charged to the petitioners' taxes.