Raymond resiliency report released

By Nikki Jamieson
Westwind Weekly News

A resiliency report on the Town of Raymond has highlighted what steps they can take to protect theirinfrastructure.

During their regularJan. 19 meeting, Raymond town council discussed the Advancing Community Energy Resilience in Alberta Report.

The Town of Raymond has been selected by QUEST as one of four communities to receive grant funding for the town to conduct a community climate risk and vulnerability assessment, as part of a larger report the town was producing for its stakeholders.

“There are some valuable insights we can take from this report to help us with our mitigation on whatever impacts a change in climate may have on our infrastructure,” said Kurtis Pratt, town CAO.

“It can help us to kind of be a bit more prepared and resilient for those kind of changes.”

A 64-page report was completed just for the Town of Raymond.

Greg Robinson, director of Community Development and Human Resources for the town, said the report cost the town’s taxpayers no money, as costs were covered by QUEST.

“Ever since we began our solar journey, we’ve been under a hidden radar of many organizations, QUEST is one of them,” said Robinson.

“They’re a national group, and they’ve spent a lot of time discussing issues such as energy resilience, climate change and the impacts some thingshave. They’ve planned a good part, at least in my personal opinion, of balancing sort of a lot of the public discussion around issues like this.

“We know Alberta has seen significant disaster, environmental disaster, natural states of disaster, in and around Alberta in the last 10years. So this report really just talks a lot about what would Raymond do if something happened.

“This is partially to do with emergency response — our director of Emergency Management was involved in the process — but also was a process for us to basically highlight areas we’re strong in, in terms of being able to be resilient through the major catastrophes or changes, but also highlights areas we need to close our risks.”

Kurtis noted the town will be looking at taking steps internally to help them “harden” their assists and make the town more resilient in these events.

If there are things that are beyond the town’s reach internally that need to be done, the town will be approaching council for support.

The report is available to be viewed as part of the agenda package for the meeting, and will be posted to the town’s website.

Council passed a motion to accept the report for information.

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