[0:00] No light, no light. Okay, I'll call for adoption of the agenda as presented, moved, sectored,

[0:10] on favor. I suppose, trade. I just have to mention that at the end of Council

[0:19] business the public will be provided, to be due to address Council for the public question

[0:25] in period. The questions must be restricted to items that are in the current agenda, and

[0:33] each question must be limited to two minutes.

[0:39] Adoption of prior minutes from August 10th.

[0:45] as circulated, moved, seconded, all in favor, opposed, carried.

[0:54] No business arising, so water matters, F1, water conservation, and staged restriction

[1:01] by law, 1412, and we have a report from the Director of Operations, do you have anything

[1:10] to say?

[1:12] Yeah, thank you chair. On August 10th, the committee of the whole meeting, there was a draft water conservation

[1:18] stage restriction. Bylaw was introduced and sent back to staff to be revised based on several comments

[1:24] on council, and closed in your packages they revised for our conservation stage restriction

[1:30] bylaw. With edits made, and we've already had a couple of comments from council, which I've

[1:39] I actually made those edits by hand, but I was wondering if there was any more comments

[1:44] you can counsel.

[1:49] Any one on council have any more comments or questions for the director?

[2:01] What's good comments?

[2:03] I have nothing to add.

[2:05] Okay.

[2:07] That's all what council would like to do.

[2:09] I'll move that the committee, the whole direct staff, bring forward the water conservation

[2:27] based on the comments, was there anything in the comments that gave you pause?

[2:35] Thank you, Mayor.

[2:37] Just a couple of things and go to, a couple of things I made a liberty of just getting rid

[2:43] of the painted brinks, which I think is bricks, but I'm like painting bricks.

[2:49] So kind of took the library on a couple of things to just actually get rid of them, like

[2:53] it was, it was to do with pressure washing buildings, that type of thing.

[2:58] The ejected, I just got rid of that as well.

[3:02] There was just a couple of things from Councillor Grice on the equipment failures sort of question.

[3:09] It was almost a question to counsel, not necessarily myself.

[3:12] The health, I think, is what she kind of meant from that.

[3:16] Basically, with the circumstances, basically equipment failures and similar circumstances

[3:20] on the stage restrictions, can the director move into stage restrictions or my thought

[3:25] would be maybe call a special council meeting to that and maybe have comments of that in the

[3:30] conversation by law, but I'll leave that discussion to you guys.

[3:34] So it's basically if we had a major failure, one of the pump hocks went down.

[3:38] the Rock Club irrigation went down, 9,000 gallons per unit.

[3:40] There's no way I'm supplying irrigation the way that I am today.

[3:44] We would have major interruptions.

[3:46] There would be catastrophic, honestly.

[3:49] At that point, I guess what would the next steps be?

[3:53] I think it was kind of what Councillor Gray, it states in the Bible that everything

[3:56] comes back for to put restrictions into Council, but in a case of something

[4:00] catastrophic, can the director go and move into a stage restriction, or do we call

[4:06] Well, special counsel meeting would be my thoughts.

[4:12] Oh, sorry, thank you, thank you, Chair.

[4:15] My thoughts are that in a true emergency, like what you've described, I think there needs

[4:20] to be some discretion for staff, and maybe with the caveat that, you know, until the next

[4:27] regular meeting of Council or until Council can be assembled for a special meeting or something

[4:32] like that.

[4:32] But I think when there's a true sort of catastrophic failure, you need to be able to act swiftly

[4:37] and not necessarily, you know, be able to get all of counsel and, you know, immediately.

[4:49] That's really good. Dolly Welk?

[4:51] Yeah, just a question for the director of operations.

[4:54] There was a file sent on August 24th, the Water Conservation By-law, and then the one that came out Thursday, two days after that,

[5:06] It's missing a section, under section 11, section 11.5, 11.6, 11.7.

[5:14] Am I mistaken? Or is that part not there right now?

[5:17] Or can you bring it up on the screen and take a quick look through all those sections?

[5:22] Thank you.

[5:25] Through the Chair to Councilor Dalliwell.

[5:29] Yeah, we actually eliminated those sections.

[5:31] So when this was written, we had looked at not including egg at this point

[5:37] kind of going more for the domestic and a lot of that stuff that was in those exemptions

[5:40] was to do with system two, to where we're irrigating with domestic water.

[5:46] So we removed a bunch of that because we addressed it in the agricultural restrictions essentially,

[5:51] and we removed to do with food and what you could water and everything else, it was more

[5:55] pertinent to domestic restrictions essentially and not necessarily eggs, so those were some

[6:01] of the exemptions kind of geared towards system two.

[6:04] And basically that complete none of that section, none of those sections actually made sense.

[6:10] Once we included the aggregate culture restrictions in.

[6:14] That kind of confused me.

[6:17] So what you're saying in stage three and stage four for agriculture, vineyard and orchards

[6:25] or food producing properties in the ALR or non-ALR in stage four is going to be total cutoff

[6:34] of water.

[6:34] 70% basically, it's going to be rolling outages of irrigation in stage four

[6:41] agriculture restrictions, not domestic restrictions, so there's two separate things.

[6:47] That kind of concerns me because this is the only desert in Canada, so that really

[6:54] concerns me that you're going to have 70% reduction in stage four, and we don't know

[7:00] what kind of criteria is going to hit it.

[7:03] So you had the exemption before and I was comfortable with that segment, but now that

[7:11] it's disappeared, I'm not so much comfortable anymore.

[7:15] That agriculture producing vineyards orchards or any food producing is going to hit so hard

[7:25] there's plans to need water, especially in an area we live, so yeah, I'd like to see

[7:32] something in there. I totally agree with you, but it would be the government mandating

[7:36] that basically they shut the canal off, right? So we don't have any water, or if rock

[7:41] left irrigation went down, that does 9,000 gallons a minute, and the other

[7:44] conversations do two to three, like we're going to have, we'll probably be at a

[7:48] stage three to try and manage and actually get water to everybody. So with these

[7:53] These stages are just meant in the case of it ever happening, like what do we have to

[7:57] go to in the sense of stage 4?

[7:59] Like we've been doing a lot of conversations with Walrus and ONA on trying, most municipalities,

[8:07] some of the municipalities are actually trying to actually implement the stage 3 and stage 4

[8:10] restriction in irrigation because they've never had them.

[8:13] So and it's not like we're going to go there but there is no definition for it, right?

[8:17] And when they're like fit for, it's called fit for,

[8:22] sort of when the problems would implement a regulation for us to basically cut us off

[8:28] or a very, very drastic amount on the count, we need these stages to be able to kind of comply

[8:36] to what their percentages would be.

[8:38] I don't think we would ever get to this stage, unfortunately, I didn't think that until this year.

[8:43] Some of the conversations that we're having over what could happen in the next couple of years.

[8:48] So the city of Pintitton at Okanagan Lake, the dam that releases water into the river is only three meters high.

[8:54] They figure at the end of this year, it's going to be down a meter.

[8:57] If the super on the inyo that's coming through right now goes through into next year,

[9:02] they're anticipating that's going to drop one more meter.

[9:05] So basically there's one meter of free board to kind of dump into Okanagan River.

[9:08] like it's unprecedented what's happening today and they're trying to plan for that they're trying

[9:15] we're in conversations with them every week to try and hold water back in Oganoggan Lake. They're

[9:19] trying to prepare for next year now. This year's kind of done. You know, like apples are early,

[9:24] grapes are early. We've seen a massive reduction on usage and irrigation which is great across the

[9:31] board but they're trying to plan for next year right now. And in the case of, you know, get that

[9:37] that 3rd year in 2028, that lake drops another meter,

[9:40] the dam doesn't work anymore.

[9:41] There's no water coming through this way.

[9:43] So I understand what you're saying and I get it.

[9:46] I don't think I'm really prey and I hope

[9:48] we never ever get to that.

[9:49] But we're trying to put something in place

[9:51] that we actually have those restrictions in place

[9:54] that we can kind of follow and rules around it generally.

[9:56] But when it comes to that,

[9:58] the province will implement those regulations

[10:00] and tell us what we can and we can't do at that point.

[10:02] And it's all based on our permit.

[10:05] Okay, but then councilor Michele.

[10:09] Yeah, just to follow up on that, I'm pretty happy if the BC Ministry be at agriculture

[10:17] of land of forestry restrict the ELR or agriculture of land water.

[10:24] I'm happy that's come from the ministry, but they've made promises and there's ongoing talks

[10:28] That's great now, that shouldn't happen.

[10:32] But I'm just saying, provincially, I don't mind if they take that we shut the bells.

[10:37] That's great.

[10:38] But as the town of Oliver, I think we shouldn't take that drastic route right now.

[10:45] If we get a letter from the BC Ministry or any Ministry of Serving Water, I think that should

[10:51] override it.

[10:52] but I don't believe that we should be at 70% reduction

[10:56] in our, in our block given here.

[11:02] Councilor Michele.

[11:04] Yeah, my question was, who would mandate that?

[11:09] It would be through Walrus, yeah.

[11:13] I would have been holding

[11:18] this,

[11:27] I'm pretty sure that it's not,

[11:28] it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not.

[11:29] So I mean, a lot of people,

[11:31] people can talk about the water licenses,

[11:33] we're not the old ones,

[11:33] but

[11:37] we're not gonna give up our, how about that?

[11:40] You know, I know that in the past, they've talked about the use of our

[11:43] allotment, but finally, changes. You know, we went, there's a lot of people

[11:48] willing to raise. That is what you're talking about.

[11:50] I've got more essentially apples who also are big, or we're going to have

[11:54] to allow you to have them in general, because they're the reason they're

[11:57] contracts. So, you know, you've got that allotment, you've got

[12:00] hundreds of licenses. You know, I think it is, I don't know, I don't

[12:09] And he says, you know, that's the way their hydrology, you know, brings the links.

[12:20] I think that it's a much richer political issue.

[12:23] They started telling you that armors, if we ever got to that,

[12:27] like where they start telling the armors that.

[12:29] Like, the burning was having a need.

[12:31] So we're telling the differentness of looking out there.

[12:33] We've got water to relate system.

[12:36] It can go on in, something's calling it, and they get their water to reservoirs up high.

[12:41] They don't get filled, and they're running out of water.

[12:42] There's no more water, unless we can put a big pipe in the pump for the lakes to fill it.

[12:49] They're just going to run out of water.

[12:50] Our system is from lakes.

[12:53] So I think that's a much bigger question than just all of it.

[12:58] If they start producing enough water down to 70% of the water,

[13:02] it becomes a nail average.

[13:04] It becomes a food security issue.

[13:06] You know, climbers can't get water.

[13:14] I think that there was, anyway, that's just a statement that I like to make, because I think that we've got to recognize that we've done what was wrong and we've stressed a lot.

[13:25] You know, I lost it here.

[13:32] Okay, so in 14.6 when the director determines the restriction, a lot of the required effect

[13:39] in users will be notified. Is that in general what's called the testing? Is that held?

[13:45] We're going to go back for the restrictions? Because I know we've got triggers that cause the restrictions.

[13:52] So I'm curious how do we go back? I didn't really find any names after that.

[13:58] Through the Chair to Councillor Michele. Yes, it's actually in the earlier section and

[14:06] it was in discussion with the CAO and I know that Councillor Torres had brought it up.

[14:19] Section...

[14:20] And the discussion with the CAO was that he would like me to be able to rescind the stage

[14:26] restrictions without coming forward to council. So to implement the restrictions is all through council.

[14:32] And then it basically in here it states that the director could be sent that director may rescind

[14:39] restriction stages section 5.1.

[14:45] Are you okay Rick? I'm not because Dave's been waiting to talk.

[15:02] That's the same as what I, is that a percentage of 14 people there? I'm just, who's not asking this question? We base our restrictions on our, our, our, our, our, our, our levels. So, I would imagine that, we can present them once our, our, our levels come, you know, back to the normal, operate on. Here is what's, what's happening up there right now? Or water? You know, we go up, yeah.

[15:26] Correct. I was going to actually give you an update, in the regular meeting on, with the monthly report on, exactly.

[15:32] what's going on. I don't think at this point where should we recent them? We're

[15:37] actually working with the province right now on what we need for the canal.

[15:40] Like exactly what you said, Walrus wants to make sure that we have enough water.

[15:44] They want to shut the taps off on Okanagan Lake as much as they can, but they

[15:47] want to make sure that we're fine on the domestic side and fine on the egg side.

[15:51] So we're working with them on a weekly basis. We had an hour and a half call me in

[15:55] the CEO today on that to discuss what we need. They've also offered up some

[16:01] assistance from a hydrogeologist to kind of look into the issues, look into Miller well

[16:05] and kind of the reflection to Blacks age on those depths of when we shut it down,

[16:10] like looking to some of the hydrology and try and help us on some of the issues that we're having.

[16:15] Right now we're running Miller is at 1.9 meters above, I believe that Rockcliffe is 2.9

[16:22] and Tuck is at 2.5 above the pump right now, so we're literally sitting about three feet before we shut down.

[16:28] P2 on Tuck, and we're about five feet in Rockcliff.

[16:32] So we're sustaining, but they're going to continue

[16:35] to decrease what's coming through the country down,

[16:39] from now until the end of the season basically.

[16:43] Councilor Mattis?

[16:45] Thank you, so our roles have recovered,

[16:47] and I just heard from Councilor Michelle,

[16:50] maybe Scala Lake is full, I'm not sure.

[16:52] Where are we in relation to our trigger at Scala Lake?

[16:55] I think it's fine as far as the trigger goes.

[17:01] My recommendation with what walrus is planning to do with McIntry Dam and the easiest way

[17:05] of sort of turning down the taps or the least amount that's coming through there, it's

[17:09] at 7 cubes per second right now.

[17:11] We started to see the issues at 6.5.

[17:13] So they're definitely aware of that.

[17:15] And we basically want to be in discussion with them as much as we can as they decrease this

[17:20] water because I'm not so worried about the canal being able to run.

[17:24] I'm more worried about the wells decreasing, because there's a direct correlation to the river and slowing it down, and the depths of our wells.

[17:32] So it's something I would really like to still monitor at this point.

[17:36] I'm getting a 1% compliance on a 50% reduction in town.

[17:40] I've got 1% less than last year in the sense of domestic water.

[17:43] So it gives you an idea of actually how much we're actually conserving.

[17:47] And it reminds me of this, give you the update right now.

[17:51] And basically, so yeah, we're 1.1% less than August last year, irrigation is 8% less than

[17:59] August 2026, and 36% less than what we used in July.

[18:04] So you can kind of see it ramping down, for sure, which is great.

[18:09] Essentially we've been in stage 1 restrictions, there's a 12% decrease in egg water, and basically

[18:15] 38% less than what we used in July.

[18:17] So, I think the early season is really contributing to that this year as well, but maybe looks like they're volunteering to turn the taps down on the eggs.

[18:30] Just as a follow-up, I am a little concerned that we have a by-law and we have a drop management by-law that we're supposed to follow.

[18:41] And we have followed those and put it on restrictions, but we're not following it to come off the restrictions.

[18:50] That's a little bit of a concern for me.

[18:54] But on the other side, I also understand the need to continue.

[18:58] But in reality, it's all done with charts and graphs, but we're not following the charts and graphs.

[19:05] Well, in the discussions with Walrus, this was a call last week.

[19:11] Walrus would like us to be at 50% reduction on egg and a 50% reduction on domestic.

[19:15] I understand the municipalities in Okinawa and that's where they're at.

[19:18] I understand that that's what Walrus's requested.

[19:21] And they've also asked me,

[19:22] Walrus is not written into our bylaw.

[19:24] But they've also asked me if they want us to put stage restrictions into and force us

[19:28] and enforce us even harder, right?

[19:30] So we're trying to play a middle ground here in the second half.

[19:34] I respect what you're saying, and I understand what they're saying, but I'm just saying that we have violence, that's the concern to me.

[19:41] We're at a base against stage two, domestic right now, as far as our triggers go, and if council would like to move to that, we could for sure.

[19:50] Mayor Chohan said.

[19:52] Yeah, I just want to comment that, you know, I think we're unprecedented times right now.

[19:57] And I think the director, working with railroads and the CEO are doing everything they can to find some little round

[20:03] but doing what they can to kind of protect our resource, knowing what may or may not come down the road

[20:10] we just don't know. So things are as tight as they will go and I think we should continue.

[20:15] I don't think that these restrictions are creating in my opinion any hardship for anybody in town.

[20:22] I just want to mention that when we had the rain the other day,

[20:27] I already hooked up Rainbow, and I got enough to water all my six raised beds for at least a week.

[20:40] So, I mean, Rainbow's are a good thing if we can promote that, but it was easy, it just,

[20:47] It's easy as pie, so Councilor Michele.

[20:53] But you're saying that people do not think they're looking on the lake, but what else is she's tied to that?

[21:00] Because I mean, I was always like to be about

[21:09] to case.

[21:11] Then,

[21:14] you know, they can't do anything about job issues.

[21:24] Or, really, our world's are going to be difficult.

[21:27] That's not what you're going to come up with.

[21:33] Does that guide you to then say to take it and come back to Waterhouse and over there?

[21:39] Through the Chair to Councillor Michelle.

[21:43] So we haven't been dealing directly with fishers, been dealing with ONA, so ONA and Walrus

[21:47] were on the call.

[21:49] They're trying to do their best to manage.

[21:51] They don't want to keep farmers up against fish and farmers essentially, what's one of the

[21:55] biggest discussions, because that is a bit of the battle.

[21:59] What they're going to release through McIntry Dam is the least amount of water that is safe

[22:03] for the fish and the least amount of water that they have to provide people like us the

[22:08] irrigation water and domestic water, sort of that influence. And that's what we're working

[22:13] in this discussion we're having with Walrus. We've been told that there's larger meetings

[22:18] happening now this week as of today with the minister and things like that. We don't know

[22:22] what's going to come out. We're scheduled for another call on September 10th with ONA

[22:26] and Walrus again with all of the municipalities again to kind of re-look at this. It's an

[22:31] an evolving thing, it's a precedent.

[22:34] They're asking me numbers that we don't even have.

[22:36] So what numbers do you need to make a canal run?

[22:39] I'm like, well, I have an elevation.

[22:40] But that's what it is.

[22:42] We've never had to have this information for them

[22:45] before we've never been in such a drought.

[22:47] Oconon and Lake has never been so low in 80 years.

[22:51] So it's just unprecedented.

[22:52] They don't know how to deal with this.

[22:54] And neither do we, honestly, and we're

[22:55] trying to do our best to manage it.

[22:58] All right, we're running a little behind here, and we have a motion on the floor.

[23:06] Maybe the whole direct staff bring forward a lot of conservation and staged restriction

[23:11] by law 1412 to a future regular opinion for consideration of first, second, and third

[23:17] reading.

[23:18] It's been moved and seconded.

[23:20] I'm going to call the question of those in favor.

[23:25] Any opposed?

[23:27] one opposed, Councillor Dolly-Wall. That motion passes. Next is, I have to tell the

[23:35] COO update, COO. Thank you, Chair. This is something that I started in my last COO

[23:44] position. It's not really something for huge discussion, but what it is is a bit of a kind

[23:49] of trailing leg, I suppose. It's an opportunity for Council to really see what staff are

[23:56] up to in a month. It is just important for staff to be able to demonstrate some of the

[24:01] kind of tasks that are up to day-to-day and some of the stuff that we can get to complete

[24:05] in a month. It also gives us the opportunity to bring this back for staff, for union

[24:09] staff, as well, for communications, so that other departments can see what we are doing as well.

[24:14] Again, it does not take an awful lot of time for it to put together, but the idea of it is

[24:20] just to show council the tasks that we do in a month, not just the capital projects,

[24:26] not just the large RFPs and things like that. They get done in a month, but things like,

[24:32] I mean, the week that we got here, we had completed the tasks on the riverside,

[24:37] are they can outside clean up? For example, it's easily forgotten, just gets lost sometimes,

[24:43] and it's one of these things, just as a good communication tool, just to show the amount of meetings

[24:47] that we do, the amount of back-and-forth that we do, some of the menu tasks, some of the small

[24:51] emergencies that we need to get called out for, and again, a day-to-day stuff, because I think it

[24:56] can sometimes get missed. Again, I have questions on things, and I have questions on some of the tasks

[25:03] that we're doing more than happy to go into it, but it's really just, like I said, it's a bit of a

[25:08] trailing leg, just the initial counsel, the tasks that we do, and it can have day-to-day and the month-to-month

[25:13] And that also gives us an opportunity to kind of look back in the year and see some of the tasks that we're doing and also kind of update our staff on some of the

[25:22] tasks that we want to move forward on next year. Thanks, council.

[25:30] I just want to say that the kudos have been

[25:35] quite good.

[25:44] Thanks very much.

[25:45] I enjoyed reading through it and all I call those kudos to our CAO for that.

[25:55] Councilor Grace.

[25:57] Thank you, Chair.

[25:58] Yeah, I know I've said sort of throughout my time on council that I often feel that, you know, especially for the counselors, we don't have a physical presence in the town hall, and so it's really easy to sort of feel disconnected with what's going on.

[26:14] So seeing something like this, it feels hugely beneficial so that, you know, when we're speaking with members of the community, we're not finding out from them.

[26:20] they're finding out from us, or we're not learning about things on Facebook, for example.

[26:25] So, yeah, the amount of communication that we've received has been very appreciated.

[26:30] So, thank you. I like this a lot.

[26:37] Are there any other comments or questions?

[26:41] Any comments from us here?

[26:43] No, thank you, thanks to the Chair.

[26:46] Maybe just a kind of previous comment, just on the kind of water report when we would

[26:51] on to date of walrus, and I just come back on this. They did acknowledge that Oliver

[26:56] was unique, and that's one of the first things that they did do. They did discuss the fact

[27:00] of how unique Oliver was and how unique the situation of water is in Oliver, and just

[27:07] to the point that I was wanting to comment on it briefly. The idea and moving the opportunities

[27:14] to recent the stage levels.

[27:18] Kill and I talk at 8 or 9 o'clock at night sometimes if we are texting each other, if there

[27:24] is an opportunity for us to recent those measures and to bring the stages back down, that is

[27:31] the intent.

[27:32] The intent is so that we can try and recent these levels as quickly as possible.

[27:36] That is always going to be the intent.

[27:39] That is not necessarily where we are at sometimes, but if we have the opportunity to do that, it is

[27:43] just to allow the operations director to have freedom to be able to do it at 9 o'clock

[27:48] on a Sunday night rather than having to wait for two or three more weeks. I just wanted

[27:53] to bring that point forward. We do take this very seriously, and it's not easy to do that,

[27:57] but I think that the opportunity to be able to do it is in these motions, just so that

[28:01] the council understand the actual intent. I think that's important to point out.

[28:06] Thank you.

[28:07] So do we just need a motion to accept the report from the CAO, or no?

[28:18] So I guess we're just a question-period then.

[28:22] Just an opportunity for the audience to ask questions regarding matters discussed in the current meeting.

[28:32] No questions, why?

[28:35] well then I guess motion to do adjourn would be in order moved second all those in favor

[28:42] and we're carried

Committee of the Whole

Agenda

Transcript