The new Municipal Agriculture Disaster Declaration Guide being developed by Alberta's rural municipalities should be a useful tool for communities dealing with future flooding and other emergencies, say officials.
Providing consistency across the province when it comes to emergency declarations is in everyone's best interest, says Al Kemmere, the president of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC).
The draft guide has been developed by the AAMDC in conjunction with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry and the Alberta Financial Services Corporation.
“In last year's events with the droughts we had multiple municipal declarations being made and there wasn't a lot of consistency,” said Kemmere, who is also a Mountain View County councillor. “So our members asked us to put together this guide to see if we could have a little bit of a consistent base to the declarations.
“There was no real consistency as to the rationale for the declaration as far as data goes. This guide will be the basis of the data. Right now declarations are made primarily for awareness; they don't trigger any funding anymore.”
The overall purpose of the guide is to promote a consistent mechanism for data collection and monitoring to support municipal decision-making to guide agricultural disaster declarations, the document states.
The guide includes a so-called condition statement tool that is intended to provide a tracking mechanism that will enable data-driven municipal decision-making where agriculture production is impacted by natural cause.
“Utilizing data available through AFSC (such as crop reports) and through municipal resources such as agricultural field men, the conditions statement tool can be used to highlight and track the percentage of crops in poor condition,” the document states.
Municipalities can then chart the findings to determine if a declaration is advisable.
“It's even built so municipalities can do intermittent analysis of their respective situations to see if things are progressing worse or getting better,” said Kemmere.
“It's all about seeing what your status is now and how it compares to other times.”
The AAMDC is asking its 69 members, including Mountain View and Red Deer counties, to provide input on the draft guide.
“It's now in the hands of our members and we are asking them to work with it to see how it works and if it's not working for them we want to know why. If it is working we want to know that too,” he said.
The guide will not be binding on municipalities and will not need to be adopted by the province.
Asked when the association hopes to have the draft in final form, he said, “Probably no sooner than the end of the crop year because we need to have to work through a whole crop season.”
"In last year's events with the droughts we had multiple municipal declarations being made and there wasn't a lot of consistency."Al KemmereAAMDC president
