City of Kamloops will help you buy a rain barrel

KAMLOOPS – The City of Kamloops will be helping residents purchase rain barrels.

Sustainability educator Jaimi Garbutt says city staff are working to build a website and will be opening the program up to residents in the next couple days.

The 55 gallon barrels will allow residents to trap and store rain water.

The advantage of purchasing through the city will be the price. The barrels offered by the city will cost $55 compared to what you can get at other Canadian retailers for $100 or more.

The barrels will be delivered to the Green Living Expo, where people can pick them up. The expo will be happening at the Sandman Centre on April 30.

Garbutt says if demand is low for the barrels it may be a one-off opportunity.

“I would recommend grabbing it this time around because I can’t make any promises,” she says.

The city ran an open bid for the project which closed in January. Garbutt says unfortunately they received no bids and had to research where to source barrels from.

The barrels will be coming from the Ontario-based company EnviroWorld.

Garbutt says the barrels will not only reduce long term costs for homeowners it terms of their water bills, but they are also good for the environment by decreasing runoff from suburban areas into rivers and other waterways.

“Being a desert it’s good to harvest what (rain) we can,” Garbutt says. “If we all participate it’ll make a huge difference.”

To contact a reporter for this story, email Brendan Kergin at bkergin@infonews.ca or call 250-819-6089. To contact an editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.