By Cheryl Jahn

Western Acres still needs help

Jul 30, 2021 | 4:13 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Council has denied a development variance application for a new subdivision in Western Acres.

That is an area of the city that has been under a special contract since the 1970s, prohibiting and development beyond what is currently there. That’s because neither the water infrastructure nor the sewer setup is connected to the City infrastructure and neither can handle more users.

“Even though the land use restrictions are going to be lifted automatically in two years, the residents put a case forward, saying ‘Look, the lagoon can’t handle it. We don’t even know if the water system can handle it.’ So there’s going have to be some work done in the meantime,” explains Brian Skakun. “It was easy to support the residents on that one.”

The City has beefed the water system recently.

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“We have found another source that was within close proximity,” explains Wil Waddell, Manager of Utilities. “We’ve been able to drill a second well that’s close by that provides a lot of opportunities for us to increase the amount of flow that’s available. We were able to build a new booster station in order to push the water out into the system. And we’ve made provisions to allow for fire flow into the future.”

That has eased some of the pressures. And now attention is being paid to the sewer systems. The effluent from Western Acres has always been handled by a lagoon, but work needs to be done on that system.

“We’re looking at the sanitary side of things, trying to do an improvement out there that will allow us to bring that flow back into the City system,” explains Waddell.

However, the City has found the cost to upgrade the lagoon would be about the same as hooking up to the City infrastructure.