Members of the Hall Road Neighbourhood Association invited Rod MacLean, the City’s utility planning manager, to meet with us earlier this month. We wanted to understand the impact of the new sewer line that connects the care home (Mission Creek Landing) to the main trunk line at the KLO bridge, and how it ties into the latest plan for the bridge itself.
Rod was helpful and as forthcoming as he could be. Once the private-construction contract of the sewer is complete, the City will own and operate the facility. If your property is located along the new care-home sewer line buried along Hall and Wildwood roads and it has a service-connection point installed at your property line, here are a few highlights:
- There’s no immediate obligation to connect your property to the sewer line installed by Mission Creek Landing just because it’s in front of your house. Keeping your septic field will not cost you extra.
- The new sewer line has the capacity to accommodate all properties in the Hall Road Neighbourhood. More lines must be built before other residents of the neighbourhood can hook up.
- Today, the base fee for the right to hook up to the new sewer line is $7,800, payable to the City. This rate increases annually and will rise to $9,000 in 2025.
- Other improvements, like running pipe from your house to the sewer line and installing a private lift pump if needed, will cost the homeowner extra. In general, houses lower than the road and sewer line will require a private pump to move the sewage uphill. Properties that are uphill from the sewer line can generally rely on gravity. These additional costs vary by property. We’ve heard they could amount to as much as $17,000 – $20,000. This is a conservative, high-level estimate. Rod was uncertain.
- All current zoning remains. Homeowners who connect to the new sewer line cannot subdivide or develop their properties based on this upgrade. Future zoning changes will only be considered once a formal neighbourhood plan is submitted and approved by Council with input from Hall Road residents.
About 60 properties will soon be eligible to connect to the new sewer. The City can’t schedule when the entire Hall Road area will get sewer service because the City relies on grant funding to complete the improvements. Construction of future sewer lines will be determined at a later date.
The KLO bridge is planned for replacement, potentially in 2026 or 2027. The City’s current plan is to include construction of a roundabout with connections to Hall, KLO and Spiers roads on the east side of Mission Creek — a project that will happen as part of the new bridge works.
The City will continue to apply for grant funding to build new sewer infrastructure as opportunities become available. It’s unlikely all parts of the Hall Road area will receive sewer service at the same time. Future sewer construction will be piecemeal because neighbourhoods are no longer independently funded. Those sub-areas of the Hall Road neighbourhood closest to the newly-built sewer line will get priority for future construction phases.
The current $7,800 hookup fee applies to all new sewer connections across Kelowna. The City is pooling the revenue collected from hook-up fees in its sewer-infrastructure reserve for future cash to secure grant funding from senior levels of government. Together with grant funding, the City spends this reserve on expanding sewer projects. The reserve allows all future connections to be built at a set price for homeowners, as outlined in the new Sewerage System User Bylaw No. 3480.
Once everyone has sewer service in the Hall Road area, the sewage from 90 per cent of the properties — even those on Wildwood — will flow to the new sewer lift-station built at Dunsmuir and Hall. The station will then pump the wastewater uphill and along the trunk line at the KLO bridge.
We’ll provide more information as it becomes available on our website hallroad.ca. To learn more about the City’s Sewer Connection Area Prioritization bylaw, visit https://apps.kelowna.ca/CityPage/Docs/PDFs/Bylaws/Sewer%20Connection%20Area%20Prioritization%20Bylaw%2012343.pdf.