Spring 2019

Newsletter Archive

Environmentally Sensitive Areas in the Calgary Region

Part of the mandate of the new Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB) is to create policies for “environmentally sensitive areas” as part of their soon-to-be-completed regional Growth Plan.

Miistakis was asked to provide strategic support to the CMRB, specifically their Land Use Committee and the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) that supports that committee, on how best to approach this requirement.

As part of this work, we’ve been able to provide supporting information into their critical discussions around the specifics (e.g., what is environmentally sensitive vs environmentally significant? What is a regional ESA versus a municipal ESA?), and around the bigger-picture questions (What is the goal once ESAs are identified? How do you look at maintaining the systems and not just the pieces?).

The CMRB recently put out an RFP for a background study on these questions, with the intent that this work can be in hand as the Growth Planning process starts, which is ideal. The CMRB and the Land Use Committee TAG are clearly interested in getting this right, so we have high hopes for this process.