In 2012, the Alberta Land-use Knowledge Network had the privilege of attending and posting on our website many presentations from the land-use related conferences and workshops we attended this year.
Based on what we heard in 2012, there are several key themes and emerging issues that we think will affect land-use issues in 2013 and onwards. There may be other primary drivers of the following issues but from our perspective as non-experts, the following are key fundamentals that warrant highlighting.
Water and water rights in the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan:
The irrigation districts, by improving irrigation efficiency, have water rights that they do not use. The City of Calgary has enough water rights for the Calgary Regional Plan area --enough to service three million people. Surrounding municipalities do not have enough water rights for their projected growth.
With a freeze on new water licenses in the South Saskatchewan River basin, both entities will be key players in economic development and land-use planning in the South Saskatchewan River basin. Find out more in this presentation: Part 1 and Part 2.
Predators and changing climate as drivers in caribou management:
Predation is the primary reason that caribou numbers are decreasing in Alberta. Predators, primarily wolves, are attracted to caribou ranges by the density of wolves' prey. The importance of primary prey (moose, elk, and particularly white-tailed deer), and the mild winters that have promoted white-tailed deer expansion in caribou ranges are a key process in caribou recovery planning. See presentations from this fall’s PTAC Resource Access forum caribou panel here and here.
Water services and wastewater management for rural acreage developments:
Bragg Creek's decade-long boil water advisory and their $10.3 million solution puts rural municipalities on notice that cheap water wells and septic fields have long term public health consequences to their rural acreage owners. See this video related to municipal water management.
Agricultural land fragmentation:
Rural municipalities dealing with neighbours who want to subdivide and neighbours who want to farm are in an uncomfortable spot. The problem is that, just as cities do not locate residential subdivisions back-to-back with industrial parks, rural acreages do not mix well with commercial farming operations. How will those land-use planning decisions get made? Watch for this issue when municipal elections take place in fall 2013. For more information about changes in land-use and agriculture, watch this video.
Urban agriculture:
Agricultural land inside city boundaries is sometimes regarded as land "yet to be developed". That attitude towards agriculture and food is colliding with an urban public increasingly passionate about local food, healthy food and retaining productive land inside city boundaries. Many cities are working towards developing a food or food & agriculture strategy - including Edmonton in fall 2012. See presentations here, here and here about the process in Edmonton, as well as this video about trends in local food.
Oilsands reclamation - wetlands?:
Final reclamation of the oil sands mines and tailing ponds is meant to return the land to boreal forest. However, a present day air satellite view of oil sands projects shows that tailings ponds are a major land feature. Reclamation technology currently is struggling to separate the fine clay in tailings water and other contaminants in a time frame that would permit the tailings ponds to be emptied. Syncrude’s long-term tailings pond to lake project is underway. Alberta will need to consider how these new ecosystems will be managed in the future. See this paper by Dr. Lee Foote, and this presentation by Dr. Norbert Morgenstern from the OSTRF Oil Sands Tailings Conference for more on the factors to consider.
