Mountain View County (MVC) council has been given a verbal report on recent meetings between county councillors and provincial government officials.
Deputy Reeve Angela Aalbers gave the update during the recent regularly scheduled council meeting.
Aalbers, Coun. Peggy Johnson, Coun. Dwayne Fulton, and director of legislative services Chris Atchison met with Alberta Environment and Parks (AEP) officials during the recent Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) conference in Edmonton.
“We talked about gravel pits and we had a good discussion on code of practice for gravel pits,” said Aalbers. “They are looking not only at the public lands, but they are trying to figure out what they are going to do with private lands.
“The auditor general has been putting quite a bit of pressure on AEP to re-look and revisit securities, royalties and reclamation for public lands, and so therefore the AEP gravel department has been full force on just to make sure the auditor general has all the information they require.
“They have not yet had a chance to review the private lands and the code of practice of pits. They understand the issues and we will hopefully have an opportunity to continue to work with them.”
The MVC delegation also spoke with AEP officials about issues related to the upper Red Deer River, she said.
“We just highlighted the need again, as we had discussed with the minister of Municipal Affairs, that Municipal Affairs and AEP work together to not only give us a report but also give us support on the fallout of the report and how to communicate to residents during a flood.”
There were also discussions regarding the code of practice of asphalt plants, she said.
“Apparently there is a provincial odour management framework that is coming out and a policy around odour management which could potentially address some of the issues around asphalt plants,” she said.
“We are not exactly sure when that is going to come out but they are working on it.”
They also had discussion regarding reporting by the Parkland Airshed Management Zone to AEP, and about agricultural plastics, she said.
The RMA represents 69 rural municipalities, including Mountain View County.
Calls for service reported
In other council news, calls for service by Mountain View County's operational services department in 2018 were on par with 2017 numbers, according to a report presented to councillors at the recent regularly scheduled council meeting.
In all, 286 calls for service were received through the end of November. That compares with 321 in 2017.
Ron Baker, director of operations, says he expects the 12-month totals for 2018 will be very similar to 2017 totals.
“I think it will be about the same,” said Baker.
There were 14 calls for service for bridge maintenance in 2018, up from six calls in 2017 and two calls in 2016.
There were 15 calls for culvert maintenance, down markedly from 43 in 2017 and 16 in 2016.
There were 11 calls for drainage management, up from eight calls in 2017 and five in 2016.
There were 124 calls for gravel surface road maintenance, up from 88 calls in 2017 and 94 in 2016.
There were 13 calls for hard surface road maintenance, up from five calls in 2017 and nine in 2016.
There were 14 calls for litter control, down from 32 in 2017 and 44 in 2016.
There were 14 calls for sign maintenance, down from 20 in 2017.
There were 58 calls for snow operations, down from 91 in 2017.
There were 18 calls for vegetation control, down from 26 in 2017.
Since 2013 operational staff have received 2,204 calls for service, the most being in 2014 when there were 485 calls.
