– New vineyards overrunning former irrigation ditch –

(OSOYOOS TIMES — April 4, 2007) –

By Lawrence McMahenrnOsoyoos Times

The Town of Osoyoos is scrambling to reassert its claim to a 40-foot-wide piece of land just west of Highway 97 that stretches from Road 22, north of Osoyoos Lake, all the way south to the U.S. border “ a distance of about 10 kilometres.
The land was the site of the now-unused irrigation ditch of the former South Okanagan Lands Irrigation District (SOLID), which managed agricultural water supply in the area from 1963-89.
Osoyoos Town Councillor Allan Carswell says Osoyoos holds a long-term lease from the provincial government for the strip of Crown land, and he says for some time the Town has considered that the land is an invaluable corridor which could be used as a hiking pathway and a major tourism asset.
But now, Carswell says, there is the real threat that the Town could lose chunks of its important right-of-way, or at least lose track of where it is.
That's because the rapidly increasing number of landowners in the area who are busy turning their orchards into vineyards are bulldozing the old irrigation ditch and planting it over in grape vines, with little heed for the Town-controlled ribbon of land that Carswell estimates is between 40 and 60 feet wide.
The thought has always been, 'What a heck of a pathway', Carswell says of the irrigation-ditch land.
But he admits that for many years nothing has been done to create the path.
Now, with the orchards giving way to vineyards, the ditch is being removed, Carswell says.
He says the turnover of numerous parcels of land this year, in particular, has brought the issue to light.
The land is now being cleared by bulldozers in a rush to make way for the planting of grape vines “ and they're trashing the right-of-way, Carswell says.
He says the Town is now surveying some of the damage, trying to determine where the strip of land is, and is setting up meetings with the province's Integrated Land Management Bureau to see what can be done to regain the potentially valuable corridor.
We are starting to reassert our claim to this land, Carswell says. But we will have to re-survey it.rnHe says that north of the Osoyoos dump, the irrigation ditch was built with wooden flumes, and from the dump south to the border it was built with concrete. He believes that parts of the old irrigation canal could be developed as a tourist attraction.