It’s been about one year since the city of Kamloops commissioned a new $10-million backup water intake on the North Thompson river, and city staff say it has been a good year.

Utility Services Manager Greg Wightman says there hasn’t been a need to activate the system just yet.

“We haven’t had major contamination of the South Thompson,” he said. “We’ve certainly had some recent spills that have started us along the discussion but fortunately they’ve been relatively small spills that haven’t impacted our water intake at all, so we haven’t had to go to the activation of the North Thompson emergency intake.”

That said, Wightman notes the city will continue to test North Thompson water intake on a monthly basis.

“Like any of our utilities infrastructure, we want to continue to operate it whether we need it or not just to ensure that it is functioning, so that if the day comes when you do need it, you know that it should work,” he told NL.

“So yeah, we will continue to run our monthly tests on this, as long as that station exists.”

The backup water intake is meant to provide non-potable water in the event of a major contamination on the South Thompson.

“This emergency intake is not going to provide potable water, but at the very least it will continue to provide water for things like showering and that,” Wightman added.

“Probably most importantly, it will continue to provide our fire protection, the hydrants around town where we wouldn’t be wanting to introduce any of the contaminated water out of the South Thompson into the system and we would lose that fire protection.”

He says it makes sense for Kamloops to have this backup system in place, nothing that not many municipalities can say they’re situation on the banks of two rivers from where water can be drawn.