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Water issues plague community garden

Gardeners appeal to City of Salmon Arm for help with broken water line
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Jim Elliot/Salmon Arm Observer Nathalie Labrie pulls weeds at the community garden.

Gardeners at the Community Garden are hoping their problems will soon evaporate.

For the past three years, those who grow vegetables and flowers in the 23 beds have had to drag a hose across Shuswap Street in order to water the garden.

The problem lies somewhere in a broken irrigation line that links the Ida Vista Co-op with the garden at the corner of Shuswap and Fifth Avenue SW.

In a letter to Mayor Nancy Cooper and council, Mary Sinhuber explains the city had previously advised the gardeners to work with the Ida Vista Housing Co-operative.

While members of the co-op are aware of the issue, they say it all boils down to a matter of funding.

Jeanette Harrington, a rep for Ida Vista Co-op, says a plumber is checking the system.

“We did promise we’d look into it but there’s one or more lines and it might be more simple, but it might not,” she says, noting co-op members agreed to investigate following a recent meeting with gardeners.

“If we have to dig everything up, this is money out of 40 residents’ pockets and we’re definitely not rich.”

Harrington says the original deal was simply to supply the plot of land, an offer that remains as is until Ida Vista residents find out about the water situation.

“We offered them another parcel a couple of years ago but there was no interest; we talked to some of the (non-profit) groups and one of the seniors’ places, but they expected us to do the work,” she says. “The bottom line is, we don’t mind helping them, we just don’t want it to be out of our pockets.”

The small fee gardeners pay is used to maintain the garden, with a $1,000 grant from SASCU helping to improve the garden that opened in 2001.

Former Salmon Arm resident Sarah Bradshaw was involved with the community garden from its inception in the 1990s when Neighbourlink and the Shuswap Recycling Society morphed into Green Shuswap.

Bradshaw says the garden was created following an invitation by Ida Vista Housing because the land in question was too wet and boggy to build upon.

“Because they owned the property and had to maintain it, they approached us,” says Bradshaw of Ida Vista. “We took them up on it and cleaned up a clogged drain just outside the fence, two young men came back and built a shade structure and the garden was a going concern.”

But somewhere along the way, government funding for the garden dried up.

In the meantime, Sinhuber and fellow community gardeners are hoping the city might help them.

“Would it be possible for the city to hook up a line from Shuswap Street to 10th Avenue to the garden, independent of Ida Vista?” wrote Sinhuber in an Aug. 16 letter.

“If a water meter is installed, participants would be prepared to pay for water during the gardening season, presumably from April to October.”

City of Salmon Arm Chief Administrative Officer Carl Bannister says council has heard the message.

“Council expressed a desire to assist; however, consent/participation of the property owner is required prior to the consideration of further investment in infrastructure for the Community Garden,” he says.