The process of developing a feasible Rocky View County (RVC) Aggregate Resource Plan (ARP) has been long and arduous, and council members were split at the July 23 public meeting over the speed to which they believed administration should be moving to begin implementing the Aggregate Resource Plan Stakeholder Advisory Committee final report's findings.
Council officially received the final report during the meeting, but discussions bogged down as councillors tried to decide what to do with it now that they have it. RVC staff had suggested a target of the end of the year to bring some sort of policy together based on the report's findings.
Division 4 Coun. Samanntha Wright disagreed with this extended timeline, and brought forth a motion that would have County administration develop a work plan for Terms of Reference (TOR) for a new aggregate policy, and bring it before council no later than September 30. Wright said that council was “flogging a dead horse" over the issue, and feared that waiting until any later in the year when the report is done now, was akin to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”
Wright was not alone in thinking the process of developing an ARP is moving along at a glacial pace. Martyn Griggs, a representative of Rocky View Gravel Watch, a community group concerned about the extraction of aggregate in the County, told councillors that his group is disappointed at the County’s proposed year-end timeline.
Griggs said he believes that the gravel industry is at fault for stalling the ARP development process. He said he didn’t understand why the process has taken so long, considering the work the Stakeholder Advisory Committee has done to get a report ready.
Wright echoed Griggs' sentiments and asked County administration officials why they recommended such a large period of delay. Gerrit Scheffel, a County senior planner who worked with the Stakeholder committee, said because the ARP has the potential to affect other areas of County work and different County departments, the delay will allow for administration to better understand how the ARP will affect County work more broadly.
However, during a break in council business, Wright said she even clarified with County administration officials, who told her that a September 30 due date for a TOR was acceptable. Wright claimed her motion would “make the elephant bite-sized.”
Other members of council opposed deviating from the original timeline recommendation of administration. Division 5 Coun. Greg Boehkle implied that Wright had taken over control of the conversation. Boehlke said he could not support Wright’s motion to shorten administration's timeline, stating that he believed it would rush the County’s staff.
“We need to understand budget implications [first],” Boehlke said, adding that putting a September 30 TOR deadline wouldn’t actually quicken the process at all. Boehlke said the motion would do the exact opposite since the creation of a TOR meant more work for County staff.
Coun. Al Schule, Reeve Crystal Kissel, and Deputy Reeve Don Kochan all joined Boehlke in opposing Wright’s motion, stating very similar reasons for their opposition.
Councillors Kevin Hanson and Sunny Samra voted for Wright’s motion; thus the vote failed 4-3. In a final vote, council unanimously approved the original recommended timeline after receiving the Stakeholder Advisory Committee's report for information.
Administration will now bring back an analysis of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee Report, recommend actions, and develop a workplan to be brought before council sometime in late November or December.
Delay in the development of aggregate policy is nothing new for the County
For years, RVC has been working on the development of an ARP that would guide County gravel development policy. Across multiple councils RVC administration has toiled to create, and council has struggled to pass, an adequate and representative ARP.
This last attempt by the ARP Stakeholder Advisory Committee has brought the County close, but the bureaucratic process and time needed by administration to create a plan of action has pushed the adoption of an ARP workplace back once again.
The six-person Stakeholder Advisory Committee, chaired by independent professional mediator Barbara McNeil, met intermittently From August 2023 to March 2024.
While it was clear from the committee’s recorded sessions that the bridge that divided residential, environmental, and industry concerns were at times cavernous, the diametrically opposing viewpoints of the committee's residential and industry representatives were able to find a section of common ground.
In the end, the committee developed six recommendations that included the County development of performance standards, proactive regulation practices, requirements for application, a publicly accessible online platform dedicated to aggregate development, a mandatory stakeholder engagement process necessary for a development application, and an aggregate plan with clear and accessible language.
The Stakeholder Advisory Committee worked out a group of recommendations for council. The public showed their approval for the recommendations through participation of surveys. Councillors approved of the information and authorized the creation of a work plan.
It’s becoming clearer that the County will have, after so much trial and error, a working ARP, sometime in the near future.
