Port Coquitlam council has approved a plan that is intended to serve as a blueprint to the city's environmental decisions for the next decade.
The Environmental Strategic Plan, or EnviroPlan, outlines greenhouse gas-reduction targets, waste-diversion goals and ways of preserving PoCo's natural habitat as just several of its objectives. The document was unanimously endorsed by council and Mayor Greg Moore said that it will ensure the city is an environmental leader in the Lower Mainland.
"Not only does this look at the strategy, it also focuses on implementation," he said. "The implementation targets are what will make this plan a reality."
One of the goals outlined in the plan calls for a 20% greenhouse gas reduction from 2007 levels from the municipality's operations and an 8% GHG reduction city-wide by 2017.
Residents, industry and commercial businesses are expected to reduce their water consumption by 30% and the city has set the target for waste diversion at 80% by 2020.
Under the plan, the city must avoid any net loss of forest, watercourse and foreshore habitats. In situations where a loss of habitat is unavoidable, the city will look at ways of mitigating the damage or creating more habitat in another area.
Coun. Michael Wright, who sat on the environment committee when the plan was first discussed several years ago, said the report was a way of consolidating all of the city's efforts into one document. "There is nothing earth-shattering or brand new," he said. "It's a consolidation of the things we have been talking about."
But despite the unanimous support for the EnviroPlan, one councillor said he would have liked to see more from the document. Coun. Darrell Penner said he strongly considered voting against the plan, adding that it spent too much time highlighting what the city had already accomplished.
"I was expecting that at the end of the day, we would have a document that would do more than tell us how great we are doing," he said. "There doesn't seem to be clear deliverables."
But Penner agreed that the report does a good job of consolidating many of the city's initiatives into one document and he voted in favour of the plan.
For more information about the EnviroPlan, go to www.portcoquitlam.ca/enviroplan.
