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City of Powell River moves forward on application for agricultural land inclusion

Application must receive qathet Regional District approval before going to Agricultural Land Commission
land
FARM LAND: City of Powell River council has approved supporting an application to include city-owned land in the Agricultural Land Reserve. David Brindle photo

An application to include 47.4 hectares of Airport Reserve Lands in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) was approved by City of Powell River at its regular council meeting on Thursday, February 7.

Before the application is sent to the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) for a decision, it must first receive acceptance by qathet Regional District, because the lands are located within Areas B and C, 7.5 kilometres south of Powell River and outside the municipal boundaries.

The city’s application depends upon regional district approval. The ALC will inform the regional district that an application has been made.

“The application gets made on the ALC's online portal and that in turn gets referred to the qathet Regional District, so that whole process will play out,” said chief administrative officer Russell Brewer. “I presume the regional district would refer it to their agricultural advisory committee, which would make a recommendation. The regional district would then make its decision.”

Brewer said city and regional district planners have already had meetings about the application.

The city’s approval was long overdue, according to councillor CaroleAnn Leishman. The issue goes back three years when the item first appeared on council’s action list. Staff was told to prepare options for the ALC inclusion application and raise it to a higher priority item to submit lands for inclusion in the ALR  that were of equal or higher value so there would be no net loss of ALR within the municipality and region.

In addition, in 2017, council agreed to spend $10,000 to conduct an agricultural capability study, with the final report received by the city in December 2018 by Thomas Elliot, consultant with Madrone Environmental Services.

According to Elliot’s report, two parcels totalling 47.4 hectares in size were evaluated and found to have a mixture of land identified as suitable for fair, poor and very poor agricultural capability. The fair and poor evaluations are areas that could be improved to support general agriculture and a variety of crops can be grown. However, land clearing and soil preparation would be required to optimize, adapt and use the land for crops, such as fruit or nut trees, or for greenhouse operations which would optimize the region’s climatic conditions.

Elliot concluded that the airport reserve lands are a fairly strong candidate for inclusion in the ALR to support agriculture.