Celebrating 10 years of clean water

By MEL ROTHENBURGER

NEWS/ CITY — Ten years ago, a lot of people didn’t think Kamloops needed a water-treatment plant. Putting up with dirty water for a couple of weeks every spring was no big deal, they said. Why spend almost $50 million for something called membrane filtration?

Tuesday, about 50 people gathered at the Kamloops Centre for Water Quality to remember the battle to clean up the City’s water, and the official opening 10 years ago that marked the end of that struggle.

They swapped stories about the years-long public debate that came to a sudden head when the medical health officer ordered the City to fix the problem. The watershed feeding the South Thompson River had deteriorated steadily due to logging and agricultural activity, and the water that came from the taps carried unwanted passengers in the turbidity — disease-carrying giardia and cryptosporidium.

Guests on Tuesday included politicians, contractors and City staff members, a great many of them there when the plant opened Feb. 18, 2005. Some, like utility services supervisor Dave Teasdale, who organized the event, are still working for the City.

Maurice Gravelle, who succeeded Ernie Kurtz as the City’s engineer shortly before the plant was opened, traveled from the Coast to be present.

“We had a lot of naysayers out in the community,” he said of the public debate over the plan. But of the staff’s dedication, he added, “We had that vision of where we wanted to go. I can’t remember ever having an argument or disagreement.”

Mike Warren, then the City’s utilities engineer, echoed Gravelle’s comments. “Every time somebody turned a tap on it was dirty,” he said, but the $48.5-million price tag deterred some residents. “They didn’t like the idea of spending money on clean water. It took a long time to get people on board.”

Former City administrator Randy Diehl said the water plant set the tone for other major projects. “This building was one of those iconic buildings that drove us forward,” Diehl said. “Back then people didn’t believe we needed better water quality.”

I was asked to say a few words about the political environment at the time, and took the opportunity to reminisce about the official opening and the milestones that led up to it. As mayor, I emceed the opening of the plant, using the opportunity to declare that, “As of today, water is no longer a dirty word in Kamloops.”

And while the council of which I was a part from 1999 to 2005 covered the entire period from making the decision of where to build the plant and what technology to use, through to completion, several previous mayors and councils had worked on the issue.

People who have moved to Kamloops within the last 10 years take clean, safe drinking water for granted, not realizing that for many years we were known for the strange stuff that came from our taps.

As I said back in 2005, “There’s nothing more precious on this earth than our water. We wash with it. We swim in it.We fish from it. We grow food with it. But most of all — like the air we breathe — it gives us life.”