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Sylvan Lake appealing Lacombe County plan

Sylvan Lake town council has not given up its fight to ensure a new Lacombe County development plan addresses its concerns about water and who will pay for the services required by thousands of anticipated newcomers.

Sylvan Lake town council has not given up its fight to ensure a new Lacombe County development plan addresses its concerns about water and who will pay for the services required by thousands of anticipated newcomers.

Council voted last week to appeal the county’s controversial Sylvan Lake Area Structure Plan to the province’s Municipal Government Board.

Mayor Susan Samson said the town raised four areas of concern at public meetings before the county passed the area structure plan just prior to the municipal elections last month.

Town council felt those concerns were not adequately addressed in the final version of the plan.

“That in a nutshell is why we’re moving forward,” she said of the appeal.

Samson said while she is reluctant to get into a costly and adversarial legal battle with the county, she voted in favour of an appeal because it allows for mediated talks, which would give the town another opportunity to raise its concerns.

“Hopefully, we can work out some details around them,” she said.

One of the issues the town wants clarified is how “soft services” — fire protection, schools, churches, recreational facilities and other amenities necessary for a growing population — will be paid for and by whom.

The town would take a big financial hit if it was expected to provide those kinds of services to residents moving into the new developments envisioned for the lake.

Another concern that remains for the town is how the county intends to ensure that adequate water supplies remain once new developments begin to appear.

This is a big issue for the town, which gets all of its water from local aquifers and has no water allocation from the Red Deer River.

Samson said she’s not sure if it is clear right now how future development could affect everything from aquifers to lake levels.

“There’s that whole piece that we need to look at a little closer before we move ahead,” she said.

The area structure plan predicts as many as 21,000 people could be drawn to the area over coming decades.

To monitor the impact of new developments, the plan proposes a two-year development review after the first 2,000 units are built.

Further reviews would follow after every additional 1,000 residential units.

A planning report to town council says that is not the best approach to managing development.

“The town proposes to first work on cumulative effects assessments and establishment of good environmental baseline information,” says the report.

Lacombe County Reeve Ken Wigmore said county councillors only found out about the town’s appeal on Monday.

“This thing came across and kind of took us back,” he said from Edmonton, where council and other county officials are attending an Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties conference.

“From my perspective of it all, it’s really kind of sad they would chose the mediation route and not really talk to us.”

Wigmore said by appealing the plan, the door could be opened to judging proposed developments based on older, less stringent regulations. For instance, the new plan called for new multi-lot subdivisions to be hooked up to a regional sewer line, which was not required previously.

As far as the town’s concerns with water, Wigmore said each development must meet provincial requirements and will be judged on its own merits. It is also hoped that there will be a regional water line around the lake some day, although no funding has been lined up yet.

The need for services will be addressed as developments proceed, he said.

pcowley@www.reddeeradvocate.com