There were so many people present at last week’s public hearing for Athabasca County’s proposed Municipal Development Plan and Land Use Bylaw that they were lined up along the walls and into the hallway, waiting for their turn to speak. It was a great opportunity to see residents taking democracy into their own hands.
But why is there outrage so late in the game?
Public consultation started in April 2015 in the form of an open house. Since then, the county says they have tried to be open and transparent about what is being proposed. There have been eight public open houses, an online survey, ads in the media, drafts of the bylaws posted online. The county has even been collecting opinions through written correspondence.
The majority of people who showed up were there to protest a proposed temporary camping bylaw, one that would require people hosting others on their land in RVs to register with the county, and not stay longer than eight days. The alternative would be to access a development permit and put some sort of holding tank on the property to transition to a permanent camping state.
The county says they received complaints about people dumping raw sewage in the county – on property, on roads, even in the water. The temporary camping bylaw was crafted to assuage this.
This bylaw is only a fraction of what the MDP and the LUB propose. There are also proposals for land designations, for how Sea-Cans are used on a private property, infrastructure in the county – the list goes on.
So then, why did it take raw sewage and private property use to get so many people fired up?
We try to cover this bylaw and others like it as much as we can. We’ve been told we should step up our coverage, and we will strive to do that.
That said, this is a series of bylaws that have been on the record for a long time. We’ve covered open houses and meetings and conversations that have come up. We cover these stories because they are some of the most important for our readers. But these discussions do not make for stories that people tend to remember, with headlines using words like “land use,” “infrastructure,” “financial statements” and “municipal development.”
Any one with an RV will tell you not to wait until the holding tank is full to take action. Read the documents, get involved and have your say early in the game.
