The City of Calgary is inviting feedback on future floodplain policies and regulations.

There is a virtual engagement session running tonight, January 31 from 6:00-7:00 p.m.

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REGISTER HERE for the Jan 31 virtual event

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This event is part of a series of public engagement opportunities being hosted by the Calgary River Valleys Project (CRVP) between January 29 to March 3.

We will be publishing a more detailed post on the CRVP and the related floodplain regulation work very shortly. For now, we wanted to alert you to this immediate engagement opportunity.

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The need-to-know context:

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As we discussed in our latest post, Draft Flood Hazard Area Maps have been released — what you need to know this month, the Government of Alberta recently released draft updated Flood Hazard Area maps reflecting the latest understanding of flood risk across Alberta, and a new approach to flood hazard area zones (https://floods.alberta.ca/?app_code=FI&mapType=Draft).  All flood hazard area zones are defined with respect to a 1:100 flood, which is the provincial design flood standard.

The Province has defined three degrees of Flood Fringe hazard area zones: High Hazard Flood Fringe, Flood Fringe and Protected Flood Fringe representing high, medium and low/no flood hazard respectively. It’s now up to the City to decide how to develop and regulate in these areas, which they are doing through the Calgary River Valleys Project.  Another flood hazard area zone is the Floodway which is an area of extreme risk and development is for the most part prohibited in it.

“Generally, floodplain planning aims to reduce the number of people living in flood impacted areas, especially areas where a higher risk of flooding remains” (CRVP website).  This means restrictions to development in areas deemed to be at high risk of flooding.

We will be back in touch with additional information shortly. Perhaps we will see some of you at tonight’s virtual engagement.

Regards,

Your CRCAG Board