Follow the pipe

There is already work on the ground to follow. In April 2024, the hospital project sent neighbours a construction notice. It listed new sewers and watermains along Drinkwater, Bell McKinnon and Herd roads. Some sections were marked complete, others were underway, and more work was scheduled. Here was a sequence people could see outside their homes, with road closures and detours attached. ^[1]

The municipal project page preserved on October 27, 2026 marks the Bell McKinnon and Norcross works complete. It describes the final watermain phase between Norcross and Drinkwater as part of the hospital servicing work, intended to improve flow capacity. The timetable shown is September to October 2025. That gives us an actual piece of the system to examine, rather than another description of the finished community. ^[2]

Nearby, the roundabout at Herd and Bell McKinnon was also part of the hospital project. North Cowichan says earlier underground utility work would support the hospital and surrounding future development. In September 2025, it announced that the roundabout and the separate Richards Creek bridge work had been completed on schedule, with Herd Road reopening. Two jobs shared a road closure. They still had to be followed as separate jobs. ^[3]

This is where the hospital becomes part of the neighbourhood story. A new hospital needs services reaching its site. Some of the work getting those services there can also support future development nearby. So when we ask how this area gets built, we have to follow the hospital project as well as the municipality's growth policies. ^{[1] [3]}

There is a financial record for that larger project. The Province's 2024/25 annual report lists the hospital at an anticipated total cost of $1.446 billion. Of that, it records $608 million in project costs to March 31, 2025, and $838 million as the estimated cost to complete. The funding description names the Province, the regional hospital district and the hospital foundation. Those are figures for the hospital project as a whole. They give us no separate price for this stretch of watermain. ^[4]

Think of two neighbours sharing the cost of digging a trench. One needs a new connection now; the other expects to need one later. Doing the work together might save another excavation. But they still need to agree what each connection costs, who pays the contractor, and who looks after the shared part afterward. A useful piece of work can serve more than one purpose. Following the money means finding the agreement behind it.

The hospital agreement does set out who must deliver part of the work. Its 2022 specification requires the project participants to design and build the municipal services needed to support the hospital, meeting municipal requirements. There is a written responsibility for providing those connections and upgrades. ^[6]

We still need to establish the price of that particular work, which costs, if any, later development is meant to repay, and who takes responsibility for the completed infrastructure. The construction notice tells neighbours what is being installed. The capital account tells us how the whole hospital project is progressing financially. The detailed accounts and handover records have to connect those two views.

Island Health's own history puts the hospital's planning across several years: provincial concept approval in 2018, business-plan approval in 2020, procurement, and construction beginning in 2023. There are decisions before the machinery arrives, followed by more work before the facility opens. That gives us a local example of why a long planning horizon matters. ^[5]

The completed work and the limits elsewhere in the system belong in the same account. For Bell McKinnon, the remaining questions are how far that work takes the neighbourhood and what still needs to follow. Then comes the next bill: keeping the services working after construction.