District of Lake Country staff may look into alternate plans to dump material from cleaned out ditches and storm drains in the future after using a small stretch of one the district’s parks for the process over the past several years.
Each year for the past four years, the district’s engineering department has been dumping material from ditches and storm drains on a small portion of Jack Seaton Park, near Camp Road, after its annual spring clean-up.
But Steve Schaffrick, the director of community and customer services in Lake Country, says they will likely have an internal discussion about the practice in the future.
“The amount of material is not a big concern, we can still grade it and shape it and make it look decent,” said Schaffrick. “If there is going to be a lot more material I think we maybe do need to find a different home at some point. We just can’t keep going back to the same spot so we will probably have to have that discussion.”
Last month a nearby resident expressed concern with the practice after he watched a contractor dump material from storm drains at the park. The resident questioned why the dumping was happening near a natural pond in the park.
But district engineering department manager Michael Mercer said the pond in question is a natural marsh, not a fish-bearing waterway, and the material is not being left close enough to the pond to have an impact.
Schaffrick said in past year’s the marsh has been the focus of district plans to beautify the area under the Communities in Bloom contest. Another pond just past the marsh is a detention pond built by the engineering department to help with drainage, said Schaffrick.
The district says having a place to store the organic material is valuable to save money in trucking costs as opposed to taking the material to the Glenmore Landfill.
“If we can find some efficiencies for (engineering) without impacting the park in a negative way we will do that,” said Schaffrick, who added they will likely seed the area and plant some native species of trees. “Over the next five to 10 years it will become another usable area of the park.”
Jack Seaton Park is also used as an area where residents can drop off Christmas trees each year. The park is in Okanagan Centre and ward coun. Lisa Cameron said she doesn’t have a problem with what’s happening at the park.
“It’s a dirt parking lot and in the spring it’s a full mud bog and it’s been like that for years,” said Cameron. “We have parks working together with engineering to save the community money.”
