Rural development is getting a boost in the Nipawin area as the Twin Lakes District Planning Commission has received funding opportunities to map the entire region.
The commission is made up of nine municipal entities and all of them will be mapped for land use thanks to the work of Nathalie Hipkins, administrator for the RM of Nipawin, and Jeff Hrynkiw, land planning advisor and development officer with the Town of Nipawin.
With these land use maps, the commission will be able to map out possible new residential, commercial, agricultural developments and what land will be left untouched due to environmental significance or environmental barriers, like slumping, erosion, and flooding.
If an area is poor in developmental value, then the commission will be able to inform developers that those would be challenging areas for development. If the area should be left for ecological conservation or because it’s rich agricultural land, developers will know that as well, Hrynkiw said, and they will be taking a deeper look before approving or denying those developments.
“What we want to do is go back and map out where we actually want to see future development,” he said.
These maps will also allow the commission to back their claims for things like hydrology studies when developers bring their plans forward for approval, Hipkins said. No one is going in blind with these maps, she said, whether it is community planners, the administrators that give out the permits, or the developers themselves. If things like soil types and water table mapping are there for the developers, there are fewer chances for problems to arise that may either stop the project from moving forward or cause future issues on the development.
“When we’re approving development permits, it’s a huge thing. If you’re gonna spend $600,000 on a house, and you build a basement that floods every year, that’s a lot of money. You could have had no basement and you don’t have that problem.”
Now that funding has been received for the project, Hrynkiw said they will be able to move forward with hiring a company to start the mapping project. Hipkins said the project will take between six months to a year to complete.
Becky Zimmer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Battlefords Regional News-Optimist
