Red Deer City Council reaffirmed its commitment to the city's Environmental Master Plan and authorized administration to continue to apply for grants to support climate initiatives.
The environmental plan is Red Deer's guide to improve environmental performance by setting goals for water, waste, energy, ecology, community design and air, and recommends actions to achieve goals.
On Tuesday city council received an update on the plan's initiatives.
Phil Boehme, community development co-ordinator for environmental initiatives with the city, said it's been five years since the plan was adopted by council and significant progress has been made, for example, achieving targets for water use and losses to help mitigate the impact of future drought or low flows in the Red Deer River.
"We continue to review and report on our programs and try to improve on our approach to community development and environmental initiatives," Boehme said.
He said with limits to budgets, grants are a way to leverage external dollars to move ahead with actions in the environmental plan. Administration is looking at a new funding program for municipal energy generation announced by the Municipal Climate Change Action Centre, and Intact Insurance has Municipal Climate Resiliency Grants to help protect communities from wildfires.
Boehme said residents also support maintaining a healthy environment. The Adopt-A-Storm Drain program, where volunteers commit to regularly clearing debris from one or more storm drains along street curbs, has attracted a lot interest since it was announced in the spring.
"We've had 65 people sign up as volunteers, and 82 storm drains adopted, so you can see that people want to help to care for the environment and support programs where they can get involved. It's great."
