Draft aggregate policy stirs concern among county residents

Rocky View County’s release of its draft Aggregate Resource Plan (ARP) has left some residents concerned with how the future guideline for aggregate extraction across the county will play out.

“The draft product heavily favours the gravel industry, with prohibitions on land use with suspected gravel and minimal setbacks of 500 m, which means that a new gravel pit with all its externalities of noise, air quality and traffic could establish easily only 500m away from people’s homes,” said Mike Edwards, a 30-year Bearspaw acreage resident.

Edwards is a member of Rocky View Gravel Watch (formerly Bearspaw Gravel Watch) and has kept his finger on the county’s pulse for aggregate industry expansion for many years.

The community group, with more than 300 county members, has requested that county administration extend the deadline for public consultations, citing concerns that the draft ARP was released Dec. 14 – later than intended.

“This thing was supposed to be out in mid-October and it didn’t get out until mid-December,” said Edwards. “We’re tired of fighting our own government.”

Northwest and northeast areas of the county will see the most aggregate applications. These areas have been identified as containing significant gravel deposits.

According to Dominic Kazmierczak, municipal planner with the county, there are currently four land-use applications for gravel pits in the northwest of the county. There are three existing pits in Division 9 (northwest part of the county including the Cochrane Lake area).

The most recent aggregate application in this area was put forward by Summit Aggregate Operations at the southeast junction of Highway 567 and Range Road 40 and was tabled last year, pending the implementation of an ARP.

Edwards has also reached out to Calgary and area realtors with the intention of spreading awareness about the effect aggregate extraction has on property values.

His research indicates that aggregate development has a depreciation impact of 20 to 30 per cent on surrounding properties – based on research by Diane Hite, a professor of agricultural economics and rural sociology at Auburn University in Alabama.

Citizens will be able to voice their concerns at a number of public engagement sessions over the next two weeks; see sidebar for dates and locations.

Stakeholders will have until Feb. 10 to comment on the draft. A final plan is to be submitted to county council by April, following a public hearing.

Rocky View Forward (RVF), a recently launched grassroots county citizen watch group, will be hosting an info session at the Bearspaw Lions Hall on Jan. 11 at 7 p.m.

“The draft ARP is written with a heavy industry bias and we’re hoping we can get enough resident input to change this,” said Samanntha Wright, former Division 8 candidate and a Bearspaw member of Rocky View Forward.

“One issue that is really a sleeper in this whole thing is that they are proposing to put in some major restrictions on land uses on any land that may have gravel in it,” explained Division 2 county resident and RVF member Janet Ballantyne.

“Most people actively involved in gravel pits are those who don’t want them in their backyards,” she said, referring to the safeguarding policy on Section. 4.3 on pages 32 and 33 of the draft ARP that outlines the extensive criteria landowners would have to meet to prove their land does not contain valuable aggregate resources prior to development.

Keith Koebisch has lived on an acreage northwest of Highway 567 for 20 years and has opposed a number of applications for aggregate operations that have been struck down over the years.

“When it comes to setbacks, I live 1.5 miles from the Big Hill Springs gravel pit and I hear it all the time from inside my house,” he said, adding that he is “not anti-gravel by any means” but views the 500 m setbacks with room for variances as “unrealistically small.”

Koebisch also takes considerable issue with the safeguarding policy contained in Section 4.3 of the draft.

“Property owners don’t like the idea of owning property and not being able to do anything with it,” he said, using the example that this policy would mean he would have to jump through hoops before he could build a barn on any of his lands that have yet to be parceled out.

The safeguarding policy would apply to county lands not currently included in existing Area Structure Plans.

“The role of the safeguarding policy is to prevent the unnecessary sterilization of a future aggregate resource from other surface development such as residential or commercial development,” explained Kazmierczak, adding policy requirements are proportionate to the type and scale of proposed development.

The ARP will provide direction for aggregate applications throughout the county and is the outcome from a notice of motion put forward by Division 9 Coun. Bruce Kendall three years ago.

“At the end of the day, I’m hopeful we have a workable policy that keeps most people happy,” said Kendall.

With respect to the proposed 500 m setback, Kendall emphasized that flexibility would be built-in to provide variances, dependent on each application.

According to Kazmierczak, public consultations held last summer to inform the draft ARP indicated support from residents for setback distances between a minimum of one mile and more than three miles.

“It should be noted that the proposed setback is a benchmark against which to assess proposals and that council would still have discretion to increase or decrease the setback distance on individual applications,” said Kazmierczak.

Golder Associates was commissioned by the county to inform the draft ARP.

Edwards criticized this selection as being biased toward industry, as Golder is a member of the Alberta Sand and Gravel Association.

Kazmierczak said membership to the association does not imply biases and that its members include industry, municipalities and consultant organizations.