With Three Sisters Mountain Village submitting an application to amend an area of its lands that are significantly undermined – the Resort Centre – Canmore council has once again returned to the unsettling issue of undermining liability.
TSMV has submitted an application to amend its Area Structure Plan, and while it is not technically complete, council can expect to consider first reading before the end of the year, according to general manager of municipal infrastructure Michael Fark.
He said discussions are also occurring at high levels with the province, specifically with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, but an official response on the issue of undermining regulations in the Municipal Government Act has not yet been received.
In fact, Mayor John Borrowman met with the minister of the department on Oct. 5 along with Chief Administrative Officer Lisa de Soto.
The issue at play is that in the 1990s the province wrote undermining regulations into the Municipal Government Act to assume liability for development approved on lands with undermining – basically because there is no private insurance available to purchase for such a situation.
Fast forward to 2010 when the sinkhole next to Dyrgas Gate in Three Sisters opened up along a pathway owned by the municipality as municipal reserve land – which was transferred to the Town by the developer at subdivision.
At the time, the municipality went to the province to seek redress for the sunken mine workings, to be informed by Municipal Affairs that the undermining liability only applies to privately owned land – not municipally owned land – a major reversal from what was considered covered under the regulations.
Councillor Sean Krausert said at council this week that with an application in to amend the resort core area structure plan, elected officials need to understand the liability situation before they can approve anything.
“This is something we need before we can assess this application,” Krausert said with respect to clarity surrounding the liability of undermining issue. “Otherwise, we really don’t know what liability we are responsible for.”
Fark noted that council cannot use undermining liability as a reason to refuse to process TSMV’s application.
“Obviously this is a significant concern for the municipality and administration’s advice to council is that some form of clarity is required,” he said.
Three Sisters Mountain Village representatives QuantumPlace have also been lobbying the province to address the lack of clarity around the regulation, according to principal Chris Ollenberger.
During an online webinar TSMV hosted on undermining in the Resort Core lands in October, Ollenberger said the mines in Canmore did a very good job of recording where mine workings were located throughout the planning area.
“In general, we have a pretty good idea of where the mines are,” he said. “Occasionally we do find a situation where a plan shows an old shaft and we know pretty accurately where that is and when we go to investigate for it we find it and deal with it.”
The Dyrgas Gate mine workings that resulted in the sinkhole opening, said Ollenberger, is a successful example of mitigation. He explained that when planning that subdivision they were unable to locate a mineshaft known to be in the area – an airshaft known as B14 that was dug to access the No. 4 coal seam of the No. 4 mine in 1938.
They knew its general area, and thus development plans were made that did not place structures near it – but instead the general area of the airshaft was transferred to the municipality as municipal reserve and developed as a pathway.
Ollenberger suggested the sinkhole is an example of successful undermining mitigation where the developer used avoidance as a strategy and the sinkhole that eventually appeared in 2010 was not located near any buildings or structures.
“Now we know exactly where that shaft is because it has formed a sinkhole, but it was a planned failure,” he said. “Now it is a matter of what to do to mitigate it.”
What made the situation more difficult, Ollenberger said, is that the development company was in receivership at the time and the receiver (PricewaterhouseCoopers) had no interest in fixing the problem.
Not just a matter of how to mitigate, the entire conversation between the municipality and Municipal Affairs centres around financial liability for the problem.
The province has provided Canmore with a $400,000 grant to assist in fixing the sinkhole, but the technical difficulties of old mine workings have made that budget inadequate, according to Town staff.
Ollenberger said the company, however, remains concerned about the interpretation of the regulation by the provincial government as well and has been lobbying to see it addressed.
When it comes to Resort Centre lands, he said, all undermining issues could be mitigated through successful strategies already used by the developer. Those undermining reports are independently reviewed by a provincially certified professional and registered on title of every property.
All undermining reports for Three Sisters are also available for review at the Canmore Public Library.
Fark said the municipality will continue to lobby the province to address the issue and if a solution is not presented before the area structure plan amendment is up for consideration, administration will provide a separate recommendation for council.
