Cory Pytlarz
Thursday November 17, 2005
Calgary Country — Provincial and municipal officials, as well as recreational users of the Ghost-Waiparous area west of Cochrane are holding their breath as they await word to hear if the Ghost-Waiparous Access Management Plan (GAMP) is a go ahead.
It has been reported that GAMP was ready to be wrapped up by the end of the fall, and officials with Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (ASRD) admit the time is coming soon.
"The last round of public or stakeholder comments ended (Nov. 10)," says Rick Blackwood, area manager for the southern Rockies division of ASRD.
"It’s our intention now to take these final written comments and to sit down and try to finalize a trail network that will be supported by the access plan."
As for a timeline in which the trail plan for the 1,500 sq. kilometre area northwest of Cochrane may be completed, Blackwood hopes December will be a key month.
"Our intent is to try to get all that stuff wrapped up by the end of the fall, so essentially that kind of goes into the latter part of December," he explains.
"A number of different groups are very anxious to get it completed and move it forward and there are other use groups who feel we should take more time and gather further input."
Darryl Copithorne, local rancher and member of the Alberta Off-Highway Vehicle Association, says that while he is "cautiously optimistic" about ASRD’s involvement of stakeholders at a meeting in late October and in the latest comment gathering, he thinks ASRD is being overly optimistic about finishing the trail network in the next few weeks.
"It’s not going to be complete this year," he says.
"A lot of the trails were fairly difficult to do when it was dry, and now that it’s icy it’s impossible. You cannot do a trail inventory to cover the trails when it is icy (with) snow cover."
Copithorne thinks it could be much longer before GAMP is stamped.
"To complete the GAMP and have a completed document ready for legislature, they need another summer of inventory and studying the data," he says.
"It’s still going to take a fair bit of time to sit down with the stakeholders (to discuss the new trail plan)...You’re not going to do that in a week or two weeks. It can’t happen. It’s going to take four of five meetings."
Blackwood says with the latest stakeholder comments received last week that it’s time to move forward, however.
"This process has been going on for essentially three years now and it’s our minister’s desire to bring it to a close and to move on," he says.
"We tried to get (the user groups) to be as specific as they could for us so it would help us focus our decision making. We’ve gotten some very good feedback from different groups."
Following the completion of the trail plan, Blackwood hopes that it can submitted it to ASRD minister David Coutts for review and approval early in the new year.
And while Copithorne would like to see changes in the Ghost-Waiparous area made in time for next year’s May long weekend, he would like ASRD to slow things down.
"In our opinion the next step should be to keep on going in the direction they’re going, but forget this arbitrary timeline that they want to use for this fall," he says.
"If they postpone it for a few more months, another year, and do it properly, it will be a plan that the vast majority of stakeholders will buy into."
MD of Bighorn Counc. Hugh Pepper was part of an inter-municipal
delegation that met with Coutts on Monday to discuss GAMP.
Pepper was hopeful in October that that meeting would mark the beginning of the end for the GAMP negotiation process.
"All the information I’m getting is that this thing is a go and there is going to be an acceptance of it," he said in October. "We should know by (the time we meet with the minister)."
No word has been received yet as to what came out of that meeting.
Topic: GAMP Article November 17, 2005 (Read 2212 times)