Gov’t solicits McMurray feedback on land-use

Gleen Kauth, May 25, 2007, Fort McMurray Today -- Janet Doherty no longer recognizes the spot on the Athabasca River north of Fort McKay where she grew up trapping with her family.

“We had a community of trappers, and I’m not aware of a community of trappers anymore,” said the Waterways resident. “There’s an erosion of a community here.”

Years ago, her family sold their trapline, which is now on property owned by an oilsands company. Now, when she goes back, she has trouble finding the original spot. “The tree devastation is huge,” she said.

She and fellow trapper Jim Rogers worry public lands are being leased to oil and forestry companies with little regard for traditional uses like trapping. “It’s not a transparent system,” she said, echoing Rogers’ concern that leases are being signed with little public input.

Doherty and Rogers took part in a public consultation session Thursday to give their thoughts on land use in Alberta. The session, held at the Sawridge Inn, was one of 15 happening across the province at which the government is seeking feedback on a land-use framework it’s putting together. “What we’re really trying to do is create a vision ... for land use and land management in the province,” said Dave Borutski, a manager with the Alberta Sustainable Resource Development department.

With industry and communities booming across the province, “all these things are starting to rub up against each other,” said Borutski. As a result, the government is looking at issues from suburban sprawl to loss of wildlife habitat to water quality.

For Vern Janvier, chief of the Chipewyan Prairie First Nation in Janvier, those issues are becoming big concerns as oil development explodes around his community. Recently, a steam line owned by a nearby company exploded, destroying several trees in “the most sensitive part of our traditional lands” where band members hunt and trap, he said.
For Janvier, the key issue is consultation. While some companies work hard to keep aboriginal communities informed of their plans, others are doing the minimum, he said. As a result, he wants the government to strengthen requirements for consultation with neighbouring communities.

The land-use framework is examining policies for both public and private property, but in Fort McMurray the issues are almost solely about public lands since the province owns most of the areas around the city, said Wood Buffalo’s planning manager, Beth Sanders. She hopes the land-use framework will lead to better co-ordination of government policies in order to manage growth in places like Fort McMurray.

“Timely decisions need to be made” on the release of Crown land for housing if the government is going to continue approving oilsands projects, she said.

“If land isn’t released, we’re not able to support industry as we should,” she added.

Local developer and longtime McMurrayite Garry Shantz, however, puts the blame for the region’s stresses on the municipality. He was part of the Northeast Alberta Regional Commission in the 1970s which, he said, laid out plans to accommodate future population growth in Fort McMurray.

Those plans, which were shelved when the region’s economy tanked in the 1980s, included building a satellite town north of the city. When Fort McMurray began growing again, however, it ignored those plans, something Shantz said was a mistake. Noting the municipality has owned the property where it plans to build an eco-industrial park north of Fort McMurray for some time, Shantz said the municipality, too, has been slow to make land available for development.
As a result, he believes the province should start taking a more active role in planning in Fort McMurray, something it did in the 1970s during the last boom. “Here, we are so far behind, the Alberta government needs to come in and take over responsibility for land-use planning,” he said.

Bill Bonko, the Alberta Liberal critic for the Sustainable Resource Development department, is skeptical of the province’s intentions for the land-use framework, however. Noting Premier Ed Stelmach has said he has no plans to intervene in the oilsands development that is causing Fort McMurray’s rapid growth, Bonko wonders whether the framework will result in any changes. “If you’re going to take (oilsands development) off the table, then what’s the point of going through this exercise?” he asked.