[This post is just a Facebook comment. But Facebook will not post news links (which makes it a challenging platform for factual debate). The footnote links work here, however.]
I am wondering why, if you took the time to post this long message, you did not also take literaly 30 seconds to Google a few things from public sources:
The failed referendum in 2010 meant that West Bench water had to go it alone under the existing WBID. [Footnote 1]
West Bench residents quickly realized that the no vote left them in an unsupportable limbo (sound familiar?) and residents had the opporotunity to vote in 2012 to disband the WBID and transfer the water system to the RDOS. As in the Sage Mesa case, that transfer was predicated on significant upgrades to the supply and distribution systems to make it compliant with prevailing water standards. Of course, under different policies and different economic conditions, BC and Canada responded to the chaos on the West Bench with substantial pledges of external funding. [Footnote 2]
The text of the referendum question does not mention sewer. [Footnote 3]
The text of the service establishment bylaw does not mention sewer. [Footnote 4]
And please do not complain that I am being mean or insensitive by correcting your post. You are the one who is polluting the information space. This is not about your feelings; it is about safe water and millions of dollars.
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Footnote 1: https://www.castanet.net/news/Penticton/58873/West-Bench-says-no
The WBID, although democratic, was not materially different from a private system in terms of access to borrowing, access to potential grants, economies of scale, and so on. The WBID had also not collected adequate replacement reserves or anything like it.
Footnote 2: https://pentictonwesternnews.com/2012/06/04/deal-brings-certainty-to-west-bench-water/
Part of the reason the rules have been changed regarding (a) pre-approved grants and (b) redo referendums is that the province quickly tired of the nonsense and gamesmanship around the West Bench transition. It is precisely because of those rules changes that the No vote in Sage Mesa is playing with fire. The new policy is basically: "F-around and find out".
[Subfootnote 2.a] See my Oct 2018 blog posting: https://michaelbrydon.blogspot.com/2026/01/area-f-blog-water-systems-sage-mesa_28.html
Footnote 3: https://pentictonwesternnews.com/2026/03/31/sage-mesas-33m-referendum-what-to-know-for-the-vote/
