A diesel spill earlier today on the South Thompson River forced the water treatment plant in Kamloops to be shut down today for a short time.

Utility services manager Greg Wightman says the spill happened at about 11:30 a-m off of Peter Road in Valleyview.

“In the end it was determined to be diesel, but nothing of size enough to cause any sort of health concerns as far as our water treatment plant, which is located downstream. We notified the Tk’emlups First Nation as well as they have their water intake,” he says.

“Out of an abundance of caution we did shut our water plant down for about an hour and a half while we were investigating all the details about what was the details and where it come from. So that was just, like I say, more out of extreme caution than anything. We didn’t have a large concern for the size of the spill that we were seeing.”

Wightman says the Ministry of Environment is still trying to determine exactly how much diesel spilled in the river, and he couldn’t yet comment on the exact cause of the spill.