The regional advisory council for the South Saskatchewan regional plan made the following recommendations about agriculture:
The workbook and questionnaire in which citizens are asked to give their views on future development in the South Saskatchewan River watershed is 74 pages long.
Input will be used to form Alberta legislation governing economic development, agriculture, land use and recreation in the region for poten-tially the next 50 years.
That combination makes Sarah Elmeligi nervous. How many people will fill out the workbook? Will their comments be heard if they do?
To spark input, the senior conservation planner with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society organized five workshops in Alberta in the past two weeks to help interested people discuss the process and fill out the workbooks.
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The events were co-sponsored by the Oldman Watershed Council (OWC), the Alberta Wilderness Association and the Castle Crown Wilderness Coalition.
April 30 had been the original deadline for the provincial government to receive the input, but Elmeligi said it would be extended once the new minister of sustainable resources is announced.
Forty-five percent of Alberta’s population lives in the South Saskatchewan watershed, which comprises all of the area south of Calgary to the British Columbia, Saskatchewan and United States borders.
“They’re going to be law so it’s important to have your say now,” Elmeligi said about results of the regional planning process.
Development of this regional plan and six others in the province is part of Alberta’s land use framework process.
As part of the process, a 19-member regional advisory committee has provided its advice to the government, and citizens can comment on its recommendations.
Elmeligi and OWC executive director Shannon Frank told the Leth-bridge meeting that advisory committee recommendations give too much weight to economics and not enough to conservation and the environment.
They also question whether the recommendations recognize the true extent of tradeoffs between development and environment.
“Accept that limits exist,” said Frank.
“We can’t have it all, it’s impossible. Balance doesn’t mean doing everything, everywhere. It means making choices.”
Frank said the OWC commends the government for initiating a planning process because the status quo is not sustainable. Logging and recreation are particularly causing damage to the Oldman River headwaters.
Jeff Greene, director of planning and development for the City of Lethbridge, said he found advisory committee recommendations to be vague.
In particular, he said they don’t sufficiently recognize the effects of future plans on people.
A red flag also exists in the possibility of interbasin water transfers of the sort implemented in the Calgary and Balzac areas. Greene said water scarcity in southern Alberta, which has most of Canada’s irrigated farmland, is a perennial concern.
“The underlying message is good … and the intention was good,” said Greene.
He said the South Saskatchewan River region is responsible for 70 percent of all estimated water use in the province, but the average annual river flow is only six percent of the provincial total.
Elmeligi said she has been assured that public input will be considered when the government makes its plan, and “ammunition” is needed to allow government to push back against demands by industry.
“This doesn’t have to be an intimidating process,” she said.
“They really want to know what you think.”
She said people don’t need to fill out the entire questionnaire. If they wish, they can answer only those questions on which they want input.
The workbook can be found at www.landuse.alberta.ca.
- support diversification and sustainable growth of agriculture industry
- encourage investment and entrepreneurship through efficient regulations
- support irrigation expansion and use some water from increased irrigation efficiency to meet in-stream conservation needs
- support irrigation infrastructure improvements
- identify and develop water storage
- encourage agricultural production as a priority for water saved through irrigation efficiency
- encourage municipalities to minimize farmland conversion and fragmentation
- require municipalities to report every five years on farmland conversion and fragmentation
- explore market opportunities for ecological goods and services beyond basic agricultural management
