CALMAR, Alta. – A group of farm families at Calmar wants to preserve agricultural land and stop a proposed 18 hole golf course and recreational vehicle resort.
The development, called Heritage Ranch Golf and RV Resort, would be a 45 minute drive from Edmonton, bringing more traffic and people to the area. The families fear this kind of development removes farmland from production and opens the door to other similar projects. Laurence and Shelley Pawlick, David Tchorzewski and Norman Ohrn say they are speaking out for food production.
“This is some of the best farmland in Alberta here,” said Pawlick, whose dairy and grain farm abuts the proposed development.
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The proposal is on a half section of land owned by neighbour Alvin Clark, who has gone before Leduc county council three times seeking a development permit since May 2007. So far, the county has refused, so the proposal is going to the development appeal board July 31.
The concept includes lots for 289 RVS, tennis courts, a swimming pool, fitness centre and golf course.
“When we get 1,000 people living next to us, where is our right to farm after that? Who is going to prevail?” said Pawlick.
Ohrn sees it as a dangerous precedent.
“Once the county opens this up and says ‘yes you can do this on prime land’ and this amendment is put in, then anybody can do it. You can’t say no,” he said.
It is a growing issue for rural families living within an hour’s drive of Calgary or Edmonton. Some established farmers see urban type development as an encroachment, while others see a chance to bring more services to a rural area.
“We have over a 1,000 signatures from neighbours that want it, but there are a couple of neighbours who don’t,” Clark said.
He argues his small proposal is not removing prime farmland from production. If approval is granted, he wants to start work next spring.
“This is not precedent setting. All the golf courses and RV parks in the county of Leduc are on ag. It is a use under agriculture,” he said.
There are no recreation centres on the west side of the county and his project will be open to the public year round.
“It will bring huge tax dollars to the county, over a half million dollars in taxes and right now we are paying $800,” he said.
The opposing neighbours argue they are caught in the explosive construction and urban annexation along Highway 2 between Calgary and Edmonton.
The number of applications for subdivisions and new construction is growing for Leduc county, said Phil Newman, head of planning and land use.
A golf course is not an agricultural use and most of the county is zoned as agricultural, he said. Each case is handled individually. Approval rests on whether it is suitable for the community and fits with the county’s conservation policy.
“We are under pressure from urban expansion but the old distinction between urban and rural is a distinction that has become increasingly blurred over the years,” he said.
There have been some shifts in policy and more rural municipalities are accommodating urban development.
There is increasing annexation pressure from Edmonton, so the county finds more of its planning work is about accommodating all the new requests, he said.
Harvey Buckley, president of Action for Agriculture, tracks development on farmland across North America. He said the province’s land use framework should be implemented to handle the location of such projects.
“I am hoping our land use framework and some of these regional plans are going to have some solutions to that,” he said.
Alberta has about 50 million acres of arable land but in the region between Edmonton and Calgary, more farmland has succumbed to roads, housing and industrial developments, which Buckley calls a catastrophe.
“We’re going to end up with the longest shopping mall in the world from Calgary to Edmonton and that is what the land use framework is trying to address.”
