Spring 2019

Newsletter Archive

Working with Nature in Cochrane

Using Natural Infrastructure to Mitigate Flood and Drought

For those of you who have been tracking our Flood and Drought project, there have been a couple of tweaks, but the whole project is moving forward well.

Our goal with this project is to help Alberta municipalities become more resilient to flood and drought by better understanding and taking advantage of the natural systems and processes on their landscape. One of the ‘tweaks’ has been to give the project a new name to better reflect that: Working with Nature: Using Natural Infrastructure to Mitigate Flood and Drought, and to make it clear that our focus is the natural infrastructure.

One thing that has not changed is the Town of Cochrane’s willingness to be the pilot. On March 11th, we held a workshop at their offices with managers from across the municipality, and walked them through the Working with Nature workbook. They have set the bar high, as their group was extremely engaged and thoughtful, and these issues were clearly top-of-mind for them. They immediately arranged to meet again to finish filling in the workbook.

Our objective is to use Cochrane’s feedback to refine the workbook while at the same time ensuring they come away with a completed workbook that they can use.

Miistakis’ next steps include finalizing the structure of the workbook, reaching out through our partners to disseminate the workbook, and delivering a webinar to Alberta municipalities on the workbook.