The design of the new weir is reaching it’s final stages and will be shared at a virtual public meeting on July 8 at 6:00pm.
The final engineered design and drawings will be wrapped up shortly by Stantec Engineering. We’ve incorporated the Preliminary Design efforts that were shared in December 2020 and have brought the design to a state of being fully engineered, costed and with construction quality drawings. Even though we will have this work completed, it does not mean we are moving into construction right away. This work is meant to inform the future water license holder, the public, and the approval bodies of what is possible, how it would operate and how it would impact the surroundings and yet still support the objective of creating enough storage to support environmental flows throughout the summer.
In parallel, work is well underway in our Shoreline Assessment Project. This project will look at today’s ‘as-is’ landscape (shoreline and natural boundaries) and project forward the impacts of raising the weir and the impacts of ongoing climate changes. We will also provide an update of this work on July 8th. One exciting feature coming out of this work will be something called a ‘Property View Tool’ where a homeowner can type in their address and have a plan view of their property and waterfront. The plan view will show many different elements such as the high water mark, current weir elevation, new weir elevation, present and future natural boundaries, etc. Note that this Shoreline Assessment Project will take into account the new weir design, new climate projection data, historical data, landscape data and many other factors to understand the potential changes going forward if the weir were to proceed. This assessment work is expected to wrap up in March of 2022 and will also help to inform future discussions and decisions.
Cowichan River Water Supply 
Final design?!? When are the lakefront property owners going to be compensated? The only consultation has been… “this is what we are going to do.” This has been ramrodded through with absolutely no consideration of our property… except at tax time when it’s ok to stick it to us with the highest tax rates. So inconsiderate.
The final design is meant to inform the shoreline assessment project, the future water license holder and regulatory approvals and further supports the recommendations from the Water Use Plan 2018. It does not mean the project has been approved to proceed to construction. There are many steps to go through before this project proceeds, including consideration of property impacts.
Taxes are a separate entity that is determined through an assessment of property value.
Reach out to a college/university student and have them create a model of the lake/weir/river pinch point to disprove my belief that a higher weir will expose our properties to earlier and thus prolonged flooding in the winter.
A great idea and a good point, Tracy. My fear is that our home will be threatened by the increase in the lake level during flooding. I have been told that flood levels won’t be any different. I don’t agree with that. Hopefully, before someone goes ahead with this, there will be some kind of mitigation planned. Thanks for sharing your point-of-view.