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Water upgrade to be working soon

Cache Creek is hoping that its new water treatment upgrade will be online by Christmas

Cache Creek is still waiting to turn on the switch for its brand new $2.5 million water system upgrade. When the work was finished in July, they were making plans to hold a grand opening in September. Now they’re just hoping it will be operational by Christmas.

Now they want answers from the engineering company that oversaw the project for them.

“I think Stantec needs to come up with some answers,” said Coun. Jim Loucks at the Nov. 14 meeting. “We’re still drinking water with manganese in it.”

Planning for the drinking water upgrade began about six years ago, ordered by Interior Health. The actual work was done this year and finished in July. By September, Council realized that the new system would not operate without replacing one of the pumps with a significantly larger model. Council approved the purchase of the 40 hp pump and motor at a cost of $25,780 at its Oct. 11 meeting.

Once staff figured out which piece needed replacing, it had to go through the public tender process.

“How was this missed in the design?” asked Loucks.

Mayor John Ranta said Stantec apparently gave the Village a document at some time last year identifying the pump as need, “but we missed it somehow,” he told Council.

Council voted to have their staff search through all of the reports and documents received for the project to find out what happened.

Ranta said he would accept the blame personally if Council received that document. “I can’t imagine that we missed it,” he said. “It might have been included in a voluminous engineering report. It certainly wasn’t highlighted as a request or as a needed part.

Coun. Loucks was concerned that time was running out on the warranties for the new equipment that was installed, but Administrator Leslie Lloyd said the warranty would not begin until a certificate of completion was issued for the project; and the certificate could not be issued until the new system was working.

Lloyd said the new pump should be here by the end of November. Then it has to be installed and hooked up to the rest of the system.