By Steve Hubrecht
The Village of Radium Hot Springs has either recently refreshed or is about to start refreshing several major guiding plans for the community, including its Official Community Plan (OCP), its wildfire resiliency plan, and its emergency response plan.
Radium chief administrative officer Adrian Bergles spoke to these topics, among others, during last week’s Radium council meeting, while giving council members an update on his priority project list. The new community wildfire resiliency plan is already complete; much work has been done on the village’s new emergency response plan; and the process of re-doing the OCP is still in early stages.
All these projects are major initiatives, but the OCP refresh is the biggest of the three, Radium Mayor Mike Gray told the Pioneer.
Gray outlined several factors that contributed to Radium council’s desire to update the OCP: the current OCP is already a decade old; there was a major changing of the guard on Radium council in the 2022 municipal election (with several long-time council members stepping down and new faces stepping up to replace them); and — most importantly — the village’s population soared more than 72 per cent between the 2016 and 2021 national censuses to a total of 1,300.
“That is a time when you should check in with the community to make sure you are going in the right direction,” said Gray. “I have an idea about what the community is looking for. Other councillors have an idea about what the community is looking for. But it should not be about what my ideas are, or what council’s ideas are, it should be about what the community wants.”
The OCP, which is developed with extensive public consultation, will give the community a chance to voice its opinions.
“The OCP really sets the direction for the community. It will shape what Radium will look like generations from now, so we really want the community to speak up and tell us what they want,” said Gray. “With all the big changes, it is an exciting time in our community.”
The village has hired planning consultants to help with the OCP. Gray said the first part of public consultation may begin as early as this spring, and that it would run, in various forms, at least into the fall.
Creating a new OCP is a very involved process, and typically takes about a year to a year and a half, but Gray is fine if Radium’s current OCP update takes even longer than that.
“It will take the time it takes,” he said. “It’s more important to get it done right than to get it done quickly.”
The new community wildfire resiliency plan has been adopted and identifies several areas around Radium for treatment (i.e. making them less susceptible to wildfires). Most of this treatment involves thinning out forest and pulling out underbrush. This will help make wildfires less likely to occur, and when they do occur will make them more likely to be smaller fires that don’t spread rapidly instead of larger fires that spread quickly.
“There are some spots where we can take action on public land and there are some spots where we need to work with private landowners to make sure they are aware of their responsibilities,” said Gray, adding most of the private landowners are “very cooperative and eager to do what they can to protect our community.”
Radium’s new emergency response plan will help the village meet new provincial requirements under the B.C. Emergency and Disaster Management Act (EDMA), which will come into effect later in 2024.
The pending provincial act contains some significant changes for municipal governments and adds more responsibilities for them, explained Gray. “We just want to make sure we are dialled into the new expectations,” he said.
