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YOU ASKED: Would you be able to tell us what the building at the north corner of Harrington Road and Westsyde Road is going to be used for? I have watched it being built for several months now and still haven't been able to figure out its use.
— Jeanette Noordam
OUR ANSWER: It certainly looks just a house, doesn’t it? But, as with a good Hollywood backdrop, that structure on the corner of Harrington and Westsyde is merely designed to look like a house.
Inside, it’s actually a City of Kamloops water pumping station.
The station was built this winter to pump water through City pipes to a new reservoir located north of the station, about half way to Noble Creek.
That reservoir and the station are part of an $8.5-million project to connect homes in the Dairy Road and Noble Creek area of Westsyde to the supply coming from the City’s water-treatment plant.
City crews are tying it all together as we speak, and higher-quality tap water should reach those residents by March, if all goes as planned.
As for the pumping station on Harrington and Westsyde, it probably has a lot of folks in the neighbourhood baffled.
“You would never know it wasn’t a house,” said Mike Firlotte, a utilities service supervisor with the City.
“It has fake windows, a garage door. You would never know unless somebody told you that it was a pump station.”
Of course, that’s not the case with many of the 44 pumping stations scattered around town. Older ones are noticeably utilitarian in design — essentially big brick boxes.
Newer ones, such as the station in the Benchlands subdivision and the station on Harrigton and Westsyde, are designed with both function and fashion in mind.
“Nobody wants an ugly building. It’s unsightly,” said Firlotte.
“Especially that location on Westsyde Road and Harrington. There are a lot of nice structures on Harrington Road. It just would make more sense for us to blend in with the neighbourhood.”
