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This past week saw a couple of
community meetings happen and the results will have been debated Monday
of this week in a special Council meeting. The first meeting was a
public hearing in regards to Official Community Plan (OCP) amendment
bylaw #1832. This has to do with the resort development lands and the
boundary extension that was completed last year. We had approximately 2
1/2 hours of submissions from people and a lot of talk centered around
the location of the proposed sewage treatment plant in the City’s gravel
pit site on Airport Way. It was a very good meeting and Council will
have been deliberating on that input until Monday afternoon. I want to
thank everyone for taking the time to attend, get informed, and provide
Council with their thoughts. Going through this exercise for over a year
and a half has really brought the question to the forefront of how up to
date is our current OCP and we will soon begin a process of revisiting
and updating our Citywide OCP. So for all of you that really enjoyed the
process you are in luck we will have another one that will see lots of
opportunity for community input over the next two years.
The next evening saw the
developers hold an information meeting for residents that was originally
intended to be a meeting on the City’s gravel pit site being turned into
a Sewage Treatment Plant. This would have shown the community the types
of plants being used elsewhere and the impacts those surrounding
neighborhoods have experienced. But earlier that day a meeting was held
with city staff, and consultants, Revelstoke Mountain Resort developers
and their consultants about the possibility of combining forces and
building a trunk main to service the resort and pipe the waste water to
the cities existing lagoon system. The first question asked is can the
existing system handle the extra capacity and then what about future
expansion and resulting capacity. The short answer is yes and the long
answer is with the current upgrades planned, the lagoon will be able to
expand to accommodate 9000 people with current users being 6000-6500.
The upgrade planned for this and next year will cost approximately
$2,000,000 of which we were successful in getting an infrastructure
grant for approx. 1.3 million. Long term planning will most likely see
an addition of a mechanical plant and higher treatment of the water
going into the Illecillewaet River. This concept will have gone to
Council at the special meeting called for Monday and hopefully we will
move to the next level of investigation to get more information. I am
confident this is a great solution that will serve the community as it
grows into the future. As hopeful as I am that this is the solution,
only after more investigation and negotiation will it become 100%
reality. But for now sitting at 90% reality it looks pretty good. We all
owe a big thank you to Don Simpson and Paul Skelton from Revelstoke
Mountain Resort, as well as city staff Bryant Yeomans and Ross McPhee
who got us to the 90% solution.
Thanks.
Mark McKee
Mayor
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