Despite being slammed by heavy rains, which caused flash flooding in certain parts of the city on Sunday, people in Kamloops are going to be asked this week to start conserving water.
Greg Wightman, the City’s Utilities Services Manager, says the province put Kamloops and much of the rest of BC into drought level 4 in the middle of last week.
This gives him the ability to implement mandatory restrictions, such as a ban on personal vehicle washing and commercial pressure washing.
However, Wightman says at this point, he’s not planning bringing those down until he gets more information from provincial authorities.
“What we’re trying to avoid is a situation where, perhaps, we go to drought level 4 and we’re only there for a couple of days, or a week,” said Wightman. “I don’t foresee that being the case, but we definitely want to get some information on all these thunderstorms that are predicted this week.”
Wightman says a call will be coming out online from the City, asking for voluntary water conservation.
Drought Level indicator/via City of Kamloops
Meanwhile, a call for emergency water use curtailment in Barnhartvale and Campbell Creek is now over, after an incident on Sunday shut down pumping at the local reservoir for a time.
“Yesterday morning we had a bird strike at a booster station on Vanstone Drive,” explained Wightman. “That knocked out Hydro to that station, and inhibited our ability to pump water any further east than Vanstone Drive.”
An alert was issued by the City of Kamloops around 9am on Sunday, asking people in Barnhartvale and Campbell Creek to conserve water immediately.
The problem was fixed in a couple of hours.
However, the City did ask residents in that area to continue to conserve water through Sunday to allow the reservoir to be replenished.
