Lac La Biche County’s groundbreaking work on environmental reserves has helped an Edmonton-based group win a national water award.
Aquality was recognized by national magazine Water Canada in the business category, thanks in part to work the company did in Lac La Biche County starting in 2004. Jay White, Aquality’s owner, president and CEO, said the county’s forward-thinking attitude towards preserving the area’s lakes played a big part in his company’s recognition.
“The county pioneered the use of a riparian setback matrix model,” White said. “Basically, that’s a tool used by municipalities for managing their environmental reserves.”
Riparian areas are the banks of rivers, streams, and lakes – and are important buffers for water health. White said Lac La Biche County recognized the importance of riparian zones, and contacted Aquality to help create a system to calculate how far back development should be to protect environmental reserves. The company’s work in the area became the model for the county in 2007 – and was recognized along with the Lac La Biche Watershed Steering Committee the same year with a Canadian Environment Award by Canadian Geographic.
“In Alberta, riparian rules specify there must be a six-metre buffer between the high water mark and development,” White explained. “But that applies to a creek you could jump across and a lake as big as Lac La Biche. On a huge body of water like Lac La Biche, you need a bigger riparian zone to prevent pollution. With this tool we developed with the county, we found riparian areas should be anything from 18 to 30 metres – sometimes up to 60 metres.”
White said this riparian work had never been done before, provincially or even nationally – which highlighted the pioneering attitude of Lac La Biche County. Since being adopted in the county in 2007, Leduc County, M.D. Foothills, and Sturgeon County have looked at applying the tool in their municipalities.
“I’m really thrilled for Lac La Biche County,” White said. “They had the foresight for creating this model, and to this day I’m getting lots of attention for the work we did there.”
