OSOYOOS TIMES-February 10, 2010

After 20 years of starts and stops, tenders have finally been requested for work to begin on the Northwest Sewer Project.
While local governments have been planning this endeavour for more than two decades, some residents in the area that will be serviced by the project have been surprised to learn that they’ll have to hook up to the sewer extension.
Others have recently paid for the installation of expensive septic systems on their properties only to find out they will be required to be a part of the project and pay various fees for the new sewer service.
It’s true that how and where the project would be implemented have changed from year to year and at one point the developers of the proposed Willow Beach Resort had pledged to cover the costs of bringing sewer service to the residents of Osoyoos Lake’s northwest shore and surrounding area.
And details about the area that would be serviced by the project were only finalized in the last two years.
Yet despite the many transformations the project has undergone since it was first conceived, there has always been a broad understanding of where the sewer system would be installed.
Local governments, namely the Regional District Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS), therefore had a responsibility to keep residents that could potentially be affected by the project informed of the possibility that, one day, they might be included in the sewer extension initiative since the project falls within rural Area A.
Blame for not keeping residents in the area better informed about the details of the project can’t fall solely on the shoulders of current leaders since the sewer extension plan has been on the books for years under various administrations.
Mark Pendergraft, the current director for rural Area A, agreed that “in hind sight, more could have been done.”
He said, however, that he found it “hard to imagine that after nearly four years of this project being talked about in the newspapers, discussed at council meetings, being the talk of the town for an extended period of time after the (government infrastructure) grant was first announced etc. that people were still not aware that they could be within the area of the sewer project.”
“This with the exception of people just recently moving here of course,” he added.
What Pendergraft argues is true.
There has been no shortage of media coverage about the project over the years and the plan has been discussed at government meetings on and off since it was first conceived.
Was it really up to residents in the area that will be serviced to find out for themselves if they would be included in the project, however, especially since the parameters of the plan kept changing?
The short answer is no.
With the amount of effort that went into securing money and easements for the project or negotiating agreements with local developers to contribute to the effort, surely someone, whether a local leader, engineer or bureaucrat, could have come up with a way to keep the residents likely to be affected by the project in the loop.
Whether through newsletters, community meetings or information provided to realtors dealing with people moving to the area, some way could have been found to let people know it was possible they might be faced with having to hook up to the pending project.
For some people to learn, only months before construction is set to begin, that they face substantial costs and the necessity to hook up to the project is an unfortunate fact indeed.