The Town is inching closer to giving the greenlight to develop the largest remaining undeveloped properties within the town limits.
Developer United Communities is working with the town to secure a water licence which would allow work to move forward on both the D’Arcy and Wedderburn lands.
The Town currently has enough water license capacity for roughly 30,000 people, and it is in the process of securing funding to build a pipeline that would bring down additional treated water from Calgary. However, the timeline for the pipeline is uncertain without a funding commitment from the provincial or federal governments and the town has a policy that does not allow new development to take place unless new water licenses are secured.
Okotoks chief administrative officer Rick Quail said it’s fairly common practice for developers to facilitate their own water licences so they are able to move ahead with construction in a timely fashion.
“As new growth comes along, D’Arcy Ranch and United, then we need new licences and or we need alternate arrangements, which the town is working on with the Government of Alberta,” Quail said. “But we need to formalize the funding arrangement and the certainty of the pipeline in order to then move to the next step which is then to acquire or determine an interim arrangement to assist Okotoks until a pipeline is built and operational, which is expected in 2018.”
The Town has currently sent the water licence transfer application to Alberta Environment who will determine if the licence is in good standing before hopefully signing off on the deal. The licence would provide the town with an additional 40,706 cubic metres of water annually, which would provide water for roughly 400 additional residents. With the town approaching it’s water limit, Quail said it would be good to secure a few more years of growth.
“We're very close to the point of break even with respect to the amount of approved development that we have in place and the water licencing that's available,” Quail said. “And that will, based on inventory of what we have, carry us forward for approximately two years.”
As with all water licences, the application was brought forward by the developer but is ultimately owned and purchased by the town, then paid back by the developer. The $300,000 will empty out the town’s annual budget for licences, but will be recuperated soon after.
“They're purchased by the town, and they are paid for through the developer contributions that we have in place, so they're indirectly all purchased through growth,” Quail said. “But the actual initial transaction is paid for by the town and then we collect it back through a contributions agreement through developers.”
If the transfer goes through, United Communities will be entitled to 60 per cent of the water, with 40 per cent going towards general uses by other developers. Quail said it’s important to continue moving forward with transfers to keep Okotoks growing and maintain a healthy housing market.
“The reason that we're motivated to make this happen is to ensure that we have an adequate supply of serviced land so that we create a competitive housing market and we try to maintain, as best we can, affordability of housing,” Quail said.
