The City of Vernon is repairing a broken irrigation pipe in the 500 block of Commonage Road, and for that reason will discharge treated wastewater into Okanagan Lake early next week using its outfall pipe.
In order to complete the repair, the city’s spray irrigation system has to be shut down and water must temporarily be diverted to Okanagan Lake via the deep-lake outfall pipe, the city said Friday, April 19.
The shutdown is expected to take place the week of April 22 and last about one day.
The city typically uses 100 per cent of its treated wastewater to supply irrigation water to local golf courses, agricultural lands, parks and other properties.
The city says it also has the ability to divert treated reclaimed water to Okanagan Lake when necessary, adding when treated water is diverted from the spray irrigation system it enters Okanagan Lake through a pipe that runs about seven kilometres into the lake and ends 60 metres below the surface.
To ensure that both the land and lake ecosystems are protected, reclaimed water from the Vernon Water Reclamation Centre is treated to very high standards that are set my the Ministry of Environment and monitored accordingly, the city said.
To learn more about the water reclamation process and spray irrigation in Vernon, visit the city’s website at vernon.ca/water-reclamation. To learn more about the irrigation pipe repair that’s currently in progress, click here.