The farms which use the Noble Creek Irrigation System are going to have to live with longer gaps in service for the foreseeable future.

Kamloops Council has backed off on plans to invest $18-million into a major upgrade of that system, which was an ongoing discussion for several years.

This is because users in the area now feel they can go four days without water rolling through the system, rather than 15 minutes, which had been the original standard that had been expected.

The City did approve about $3-million in upgrades with the rest of the capital work expected to be done over the next 20 years on an as-needed basis. The distribution mains and services on the irrigation system will be replaced only when it breaks down.

“Predicting the timing of that need is impossible, so the recommendation has been removed from the 20-year capital needs assessment,” a report to City Council said.

“It should be noted that the opportunity to defer main/service replacement is contingent on the City obtaining statutory rights-of-way for all City-owned NCIS infrastructure that crosses private property without the required legal right of ways.”

The city also approved the installation of water meters in the hopes of getting the system to fund itself within four years, starting in 2023.

Civic Operations Director Jen Fretz believes the decision to install water meters users makes sense.

“Right now, we don’t know how much water people are using because we don’t have anyway to measure that, so the idea of installing water meters is to get a better understanding of how much water each customer is using.”

Under the newly-approved plans, the farms using the irrigation system in Noble Creek will be paying a temporary increased water rate, to cover costs before the water meters eventually pay for the system’s upkeep itself.

Mayor Ken Christian explains that most users should be understanding of the increase, which will be a roughly 15 percent increase, or around $275 per irrigable hectare of land.

“Even the users out there recognize that the utility rate was too low, it was just a question of how high to raise it.”

According to the city, the temporary increased water rate will take place over the next five-years, which is the expected timeline for the system to become self sustainable.

Christian suggests that once the system can be sustained through the water meters, subsequent councils can then amend the water rate for the affected users.

The water meters for Noble Creek Irrigation System users are set to be installed sometime this year.