May 31, 2018 by Jason Contant
Reducing the risk of wildfire, several communities in western Canada are using development permits as a way to address construction of new residential development in the wildland-urban interface, the Institute for Catastrophe Loss Reduction (ICLR) noted in a recent report.
More than a dozen communities in British Columbia and Alberta have begun to use development permits to control the extent, nature and location of new residential development, ICLR executive director Paul Kovacs wrote in Development permits: An emerging policy instrument for local governments to manage interface fire risk in a changing climate.
Some local governments now include covenants in the development permit system requiring fire resilient building materials for new homes, the report notes.
Conditions for approving a development permit may include:
“The provincial and territorial governments do not presently include provisions addressing the risk of damage from wildland fires through their building codes,” Kovacs wrote. “[F]ortunately, these public safety measures are now emerging in local government development permit requirements.”
The report used the following three case examples as an overview of the range of planning actions that have been taken by local governments.
“The use of local government planning tools to address wildfire emerging in British Columbia and Alberta is likely to spread across Canada,” Kovacs wrote, noting that in 2014, a revised provincial policy statement by the Government of Ontario introduced new requirements for local governments under the Planning Act. Local governments in Ontario are now required to use their planning powers to address flood and wildfire.
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