As Salt Spring Island looks toward a future that may include more piped water connections, regional officials are hedging their bets at one property –– and hope future public housing efforts aren’t left high and dry.
After years of delay, construction at 161 Drake Road has finally begun, with foundations being prepared for what BC Housing has said will be 32 units of supportive housing, as well as four additional affordable rental units to be made available for people with low to moderate incomes.
As the timeline for that project becomes clearer –– BC Housing now predicts residents will move into the modular-construction units by this coming summer –– the downstream effect of the North Salt Spring Waterworks District’s (NSSWD) announcement it may ease its 10-year-old moratorium on new water connections is less certain.
In August, NSSWD officials said the district will propose adding the water-draw equivalent of as many as 300 multi-family dwelling connections, just on one side of its system –– where water is drawn from Maxwell Lake.
“That could –– and probably will –– include Drake Road,” said Salt Spring Island CRD director Gary Holman, speaking at the regional district’s Housing and Hospital Committee meeting Wednesday, Oct. 2. “But there’s only so much water available.”
The land is owned by the CRD, but leased in its entirety by BC Housing, a 60-year agreement that so far has seen work only in the portion fronting Drake Road. The regional district has had plans to utilize the entire 5.5-acre parcel for affordable housing before –– 80 units were proposed in 2013 –– but they were halted as the water connection moratorium began.
Well drilling results at the time were “poor,” according to a contemporary Islands Trust staff report, and unlikely to support that density.
But tucked into the CRD’s Regional Housing operating and capital budget for 2025 is a $300,000 allocation for “additional” drilling work at 161 Drake Road.
Last November, CRD’s general manager of planning and protective services Kevin Lorette told the Electoral Areas Committee that CRD staff and a consulting hydrogeologist had been prepping for a groundwater exploration there, meant to inform the CRD board for future development on the site.
And at the Oct. 2 meeting, Lorette said there may yet be “further opportunities” for the CRD at the site, adding that while the lifting of the water connection moratorium may negate the need, the one-time operational expense for drilling — to be funded through the Community Works Fund –– should remain in the budget.
Holman said his concern was that if development on the rest of the Drake Road site was delayed, publicly funded affordable housing could lose its place in line; new connections to the NSSWD system may simply be allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis.
“The limited number of densities that that partial lifting would allow could be taken up by other projects,” Holman warned, “both for-profit and non-profit.”
CRD staff said they would continue regular reporting on Drake Road to directors; meanwhile, the first of two open house events on the water moratorium review, hosted by NSSWD at the Legion’s Meaden Hall, takes place from 2 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 22.