Some of the most expensive infrastructure in our community is buried underground and maybe because of that gets very little attention. It is our water and sewer infrastructure, and in our region it will become one of the most expensive capital line items on budgets in the coming years. Besides the general expansion of water and sewer infrastructure to accommodate growth in the region, much of the current infrastructure was installed in the mid-20th century when they only designed infrastructure to last 50-years (today infrastruture is designed to last about 100 years). In the Township of Langley, Council received a list of Pre-Approval 2013 Capital Projects. These projects may be approved before the 2013 budget is formally approved. Of the $28 million requested, $19 million is for water and sewer infrastructure. The two big tickets items are the East Langley Water Supply project at $11.7 million and Maple Ridge Pump Station at $5 million. These costs are just the pre-approval costs and don’t represent the full cost of the projects.
Interesting enough water and sewer project like the East Langley Water Supply project are actually what enables sprawl (more so than roads), so will Salmon River/Uplands in rural Langley be ripe for development once this project is complete?
Speaking about water supply, there is a petition from residents of South Milner to expand water service in their area. A local area service tax zone would be created to share the $4 million cost of this expansion between 88 properties.
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| Proposed South Milner Water Distribution Expansion Project |
The long range plan is to connect this proposed distribution system with the Murrayville distribution network along 216 Street which is where the East Langley Water Supply main will be built.
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