Rocky View County’s (RVC) Aggregate Resource Plan (ARP) advisory committee met for, what was supposed to be, the final time on Thursday to discuss the committee’s draft report that was to be presented to council by March 1.
However, it was clear that a consensus among the committee members had not been reached and as such, the committee’s work will drag on into March.
The committee’s chair Barbara McNeil had authored the draft of the ARP advisory committee report, which was then published on the County website, and 11 recommendations were outlined in the 15 page document.
The report states that most of the 11 recommendations were achieved through committee consensus, however, when the committee met Thursday consensus did not in fact seem reached.
Hazel George, one of the committee’s agriculture representatives, said that she was disappointed that the interests she had represented on the committee since August were “completely ignored” by the draft report.
“We have a number of interests [here]...and we do not have consensus on far too many things,” said George.
One of the residential representatives, John Weatherill, said that he didn’t like that there wasn’t enough description in the draft about what the committee disagreed with.
“I think it’s incredibly important to express where consensus was not reached [and] to provide some rationale to those various perspectives,” said Weatherill.
The recommendations that the draft states the committee mostly agreed are listed in the draft report on the County’s website.
According to the report, the committee recommended that the County take a lead in the regulation of the gravel industry, to set aggregate performance standards, to understand the economic effects of gravel development by preparing independent assessments of costs and benefits of gravel production, and to plan long-term development of gravel resources.
The recommendations also mention that the County should consider evolving standards to the inspection and operations of gravel development, improve stakeholder engagement efforts by creating a user friendly APR document that people can look through, and to understand and monitor cumulative efforts of air quality, noise, and traffic caused by gravel production.
The final set of recommendations said the County should pay attention to public concerns of groundwater and have some regard for the environmental concerns that arise from gravel development.
The County should also recognize the potential impacts to the Big Hill Springs area, according to the listed recommendations.
The last recommendation touches on the locations of gravel development, but the report states that “committee members did not expect to find consensus on this topic.”
However, the report mentions that the committee did engage in “spirited and respectful” discussions about gravel site locations.
No one on the committee mentioned the proposed draft recommendations specifically during the meeting, but a few mentioned that it was more important that a complete consensus be reached before any draft be submitted to the County.
“It doesn’t make sense to rush this…it’s more important we get this right,” said Weatherill.
Committee members decided that another in-person meeting was required to help work out a consensus.
As stated, when setting up the committee the County set a deadline of March 1 for a draft report, but members of the committee concluded they believed there was more to discuss before official recommendations were presented to RVC council.
The next committee meeting is expected to be sometime during the second week of March.
