Canmore’s draft proposed municipal development plan is out for public input until Friday (Oct. 30) before administration makes changes to the plan and brings it back to council for consideration of first reading in the new year.
One significant change many who took the time to review the MDP may have noticed from the 1998 MDP is that requirements for environmental impact statements (EIS) have been removed and included as part of a policy instead.
“As with many things in the MDP, we are trying to keep the plan as a higher level document that talks about goals and intent and all the things that are regulations and impact day-to-day planning approvals are in the Land Use Bylaw (LUB) or other policy documents,” said development planner Tracy Woitenko. “So that is what we are proposing for the EIS policy.”
The new policy is expected to be approved by council at the same time as the MDP and is out for review along with the MDP, which guides future development for the community. Woitenko said as a policy, the technical details for an EIS can be set out and is more appropriate than as part of the overarching MDP.
The difference can be seen in the fact the new MDP does not set out specific requirements to protect environmentally sensitive areas, but looks to ways to protect them through the EIS’s findings.
“We are looking at using, rather than arbitrary numbers from a scientific or ecological perspective, to ask the proponent to do an EIS to identify areas and impacts,” Woitenko said.
Wildlife corridors continue to be a major environmentally sensitive area for protection and they are mapped out in the proposed MDP, along with habitat patches and water bodies.
“There are no changes to those,” she said. “We still recognize the Bow Corridor Ecosystem Advisory Group’s guideline document for planning purposes and the recommendations within that document, but we also recognize there are exemptions like Three Sisters lands, for example.”
Essentially, said Woitenko, the MDP sets out the high level goal of protecting the natural environment and when an EIS is needed, it is the EIS policy that would determine specific mitigations or impacts on those areas.
“We are trying to make it more in line with actual practices – not one size fits all,” she said, adding there is clear rationale set out for when an EIS is required and when it should be reviewed by a third party. “It gives the municipality more flexibility. We have not lost our teeth or our ability to do things, but we have discretion.”
The environmental stewardship section of the MDP sets out the following goals: To identify and protect environmentally sensitive areas that contribute to the maintenance of natural processes, biodiversity and the quality of life for residents; to identify and protect locally and regionally significant wildlife movement corridors and habitat patches; to support initiatives that minimize the impact of the built environment on the natural environment; to become a municipal leader in environmental sustainability, to continuously improve the Town of Canmore’s corporate environmental performance; to support grassroots community sustainability initiatives and design a community that is energy efficient and adapts to a changing climate.
“This section of the MDP includes goals and policies intended to facilitate environmental stewardship,” states the MDP. “Within Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESA), in particular wildlife corridors and habitat patches, the natural environment has priority over any human uses.”
Currently, the Town of Canmore is working with Three Sisters Mountain Village and the provincial government on delineating the final wildlife corridor in that development area.
“Our hope is that before third reading that corridor will actually be designated and can be shown on the plan,” Woitenko said.
