A new project mapping Red Deer County’s environmentally significant areas won’t tie the hands of farmers, reassured Mayor Jim Wood on Tuesday.
“This isn’t about telling farmers how to farm their land,” said Wood after council voted to incorporate the Environmentally Significant Areas Project into a soon-to-be-updated Municipal Development Plan.
Identifying areas with noteworthy environmental attributes is meant to help the county when agricultural areas are being transformed for another use, such as industrial parks or residential subdivisions.
Wood said the county respects that landowners are the best stewards of their land and agriculture will continue as the primary use in most areas identified as significant.
“We’re not trying to get into the nitty gritty of how people raise their crops or have their livestock. And that was one of the things that people were worried about to start with, until they understood that’s not where we’re headed at the county.”
Begun in 2009, the project involved identifying 27 areas with unique attributes throughout the county, such as sloughs, wetlands, river valleys, badlands and places that provide a diversity of habitats and natural features. The work updated a similar inventory done in 1990.
Examples of significant areas include Cygnet Lake, east of Sylvan Lake; Red Deer River Canyon; the Pine Lake Moraine, a 49,000-acre area of small lakes created from debris left by retreating glaciers; and the Tolman Badlands east of Elnora in the southeast corner of the county.
The inventory will be used to help guide future county development decisions and will be incorporated into a municipal development plan that is scheduled to be updated this year.
By identifying environmentally significant areas, the county will have a better handle on when environmental reviews need to be completed as part of a development application. Environmental reviews can be ordered under existing rules, but it has not been clear when they are required.
Wood said the county went to great lengths to get public feedback on the environmentally significant areas project. There were six open houses and public meetings beginning in February 2010 that drew nearly 600 people and produced 146 comment sheets.
“We just wanted to make sure we’re able to garner everyone’s view and make sure that we’re not off on a tangent somewhere, that we are in fact following the wishes of Red Deer County residents.”
County residents will have further opportunity to comment, likely in the next month or so, when the municipal development plan is presented to the public for feedback.
Coun. Philip Massier expressed concern that the project says environmental reviews “may be required,” which suggests some ambiguity. Massier said he hoped that ongoing work will provide transparency on exactly when that kind of additional review would be required.
pcowley@www.reddeeradvocate.com