The Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) is continuing to gather public feedback for its draft Climate Action Plan.
Board Chair Rob Gay says the climate is driving a lot of the RDEK’s decision-making and they need to have policy in place to deal with that.
“We need to reach a place in public policy that recognizes the changing climate and lays out how we mitigate and adapt to that climate,” says Gay.
“People are clear that they do not like those days full of smoke in the summer and we don’t like drought.”
Gay says recent changes to water restrictions highlight the impacts of climate change in the East Kootenay.
“We’ve had to re-learn about water conservation. In rural areas, we were told by the Province, to reduce our water use by 50 per cent,” said Gay.
“I’ve never seen that in my 20 years in government and that happened two years ago and again last year.”
Gay says the draft plan contains a detailed outline for the RDEK’s actions for the next two years.
“We’re going to buy electric vehicles, we have to reduce greenhouse gasses from homes, we’re going to see if we can find some grants to help people put in heat pumps,” said Gay.
“The plan goes line by line and some of these ideas are quite expensive – if we get to net zero in all of our buildings, that’s going to get quite expensive. Other ideas are not that expensive like learning how to be more efficient with water, that is just a change in behaviour.”
Gay says the Climate Action Plan is important to help the RDEK and its residents prepare for further impacts of climate change.
“These are the things that science has predicted: we’re going to have more severe weather events, less snow in the winter, and we’re going to have higher temperatures,” said Gay.
“The data is starting to show that what science predicted years ago is completely correct.
An online version of the plan can be found here or you can request a paper copy by contacting the RDEK.
The feedback deadline is noon on Monday, December 2, with the results presented to the board on December 13.
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