Mountain View County council has carried a motion to re-designate 160 acres of land, located west of Didsbury, from agricultural district to institutional, educational and cultural district, in accordance with the land use bylaw.
The motion was made due to a request from the Town of Didsbury to change the land use designation to allow for rehabilitation and expansion of the upper lagoons.
Karen Henry, manager of planning and infrastructure for the town, said that the motion was needed because of the land use bylaw, which changed since the initial installation of the sewage storage lagoon 22 years ago.
“With some land use, the bylaw revisions they did in the last few years, they created a new district that didn't exist at the time we originally developed this one,” said Henry.
“So that's why they said with our planned expansion that we fit better under the new designation than the existing one, so we did the application.”
The project has been sent out to tender and the town has awarded a contract for phase 1, which includes rehabilitation and expansion of the upper lagoon, she noted.
The last hurdle before any work can begin is that the town also needs to receive a development permit from the county, and Henry expects that permit to be granted in the next few weeks.
“So assuming they approve everything, as soon as we get the approvals, our contractor will be able to get busy,” she said.
They will do some preliminary dirt moving this fall, and she expects the project will begin in earnest next summer.
“If they can get some work done this winter, they'll get a little bit ahead of the game, because we've got a fairly critical four-month window,” she said.
“We have two storage lagoons, one is down by the lower lagoons and we have the larger upper storage.”
Once the upper lagoon is taken out of commission, the lower lagoon will be able to store about four months' worth of sewage, she noted.
“Then we need the upper one back online. Once they take the upper lagoon off-line, there's some work they can do outside of the lagoon in preparation for the expansion but mostly it'll be next summer,” she said.
The project will be getting a large sum of the funds needed from the Alberta Municipal Water/Wastewater Partnership, she added, noting the bid for the upper lagoon project came to $7,535,000.
The rest of the money will be coming from town and county residents who use the sewage system, and she noted that county taxpayers will not be paying for the project as it is paid for by those who use the system.
Duncan Milne, county councillor for Division 3, said that the town will need to sort out some issues with a landowner adjacent to the property housing the lagoon, but after those have been resolved, the development permit can go through.
“My understanding is (the land) was never really sold properly,” said Milne. “This was put in place 22 years ago and with all the different changes in the land use bylaw and all that kind of stuff, now to keep it in compliance, we had to do a rezoning on it.”
The project has been somewhat rushed through county council, but unfortunately, it has to go through all the county hoops before it can be done, he said.
“The town has had an opportunity to get this work done for substantially less dollars if they can get it done this year, so they've been pushing a little bit to have it done and I don't blame them for that, but the process still has to be followed,” he said.
