After years of planning, site work for the future Maxwell Lake water treatment plant is starting this month, with the facility expected to be online and improving water quality sometime in 2027.
North Salt Spring Waterworks District (NSSWD) staff will be visiting the site this week with lender’s representatives in tow, and expect the $11.7 million in borrowing authorized by last year’s referendum to be secured by next month at the latest.
“The site visit is a loan requirement, along with providing them with the contracts that have been signed,” said financial officer Tammy Lannan at the district’s meeting Thursday, Feb. 26. “We expect to get the $11.7 million started by the end of April.”
Meanwhile, contractors plan to mobilize during the first week of March for tree felling and site clearing. A funding opportunity through the Climate Resilient Infrastructure Service has yielded a $20,000 grant to assess wildfire risk. Staff said the district was also respecting requests from interested First Nations to have monitors on-site during the soil disturbance stage of the project.
But an irregular effort has erupted from one district trustee, attempting to undo previous board decisions and remake plans for the multi-million-dollar project. A multiple-choice motion was brought Thursday by trustee David Courtney, asking either to hold a new voter referendum in May — to explicitly approve the Maxwell project’s current budget — or “preferably” to abandon current plans and put out a new request for proposals to design and build the plant for $2 million less than already approved.
After protracted discussion, that motion failed, with no other trustees finding favour with either plan.
Recently posting on social media, Courtney suggested communication surrounding the borrowing referendum for the Maxwell plant was misleading, and during Thursday’s meeting he characterized the facility’s current price tag of $16.6 million as a “cost overrun,” pointing to a projected $14.6 million estimate, which was first presented to the board during a September 2024 update from consulting engineers Kerr Wood Leidal (KWL).
Those estimates, the four remaining board members and staff agreed, were noted as “preliminary” in district communications leading up to the referendum and “Class B” in public meetings and internally, with a margin for error that could range as much as 15 per cent in either direction — and, given inflationary pressures alone, few expected that number to adjust downward.
Regardless, while voters approved a plan to borrow $11.7 million to help fund the project, the design or final cost of the plant — or indeed, whether or not to build one — was not on the ballot. Island Health is requiring the district complete the project, as part of an effort to remove more of the organic matter that reacts with chlorine treatment to create trihalomethanes (THMs), such as chloroform and bromodichloromethane — and trustees themselves have approved project milestones, including its budget, at every stage.
Courtney last month moved to rescind KWL’s construction engineering contract award, but no trustees were persuaded to second the motion; on Friday, he opened a new online petition.
In other water news Thursday, staff reported that even after a 10-year hold on new connections, traffic from a predicted “water rush” hasn’t exactly beaten a path to the front door at the district’s office, with now slightly more than 20 per cent of the allocated volume having been spoken for since the NSSWD started receiving applications again this past spring.
The district approved a partial lift of its water moratorium policy at the beginning of last year, with staff ready to accept new connection requests by April — setting a cap by estimated volume, rather than by number of connections, of 50,000 cubic metres annually. But apart from 36 new connections to bring water to BC Housing’s new supportive housing facility on Drake Road, requests have otherwise dribbled in, with a total of 61 new connections approved in 2025, representing a little over 10,200 cubic metres of annual water use.
CAO Mark Boysen said there have since been some new connections that came in during January and February, which may have increased that number to one representing about 22 per cent. The partial lifting of the moratorium allowed the receipt of new applications on only the Maxwell Lake side of the NSSWD system.