Fast growing Okotoks wrestles with sustainability

The latest census crowns Okotoks as Canada's second fastest growing community, behind Milton, Ont.

Figures released Tuesday by Statistics Canada show the scenic little town has exploded by 46.7 per cent since the last census count in 2001.

That's no surprise toClaire White and her husband. When theysaw the old-style main street and picturesque river winding through town, they were struck by how much Okotoks looked like the England they'd left behind.

"We drove down here in the summer — it was a beautiful sunny day and all the kids were playing in the river and we just fell in love with it," said White.

Last year White and her family joined the thousands being drawn to Alberta from the rest of Canada and indeed all over the world by the extended oil and gas boom.

Okotoks is home to 17,145 people, a huge increase from the 11,689 people who lived there in 2001.

Property values, which used to be a bargain compared to the sprawling suburbs of Calgary some 18 kilometres north, have doubled in the last four years.

$299,900 for 'cute cottage'

The cheapest single-family home available recently was a 1,000-square-foot fixer-upper described as a "cute cottage" with no garage and an unfinished basement for $299,900.

White, a real estate agent,said the market is expected to grow a further 15 per cent this year.

The developers can't keep up. They built more than 700 homes in Okotoks last year, about the same number as the city of Lethbridge to the south, which is five times bigger.

What is remarkably different in Okotoks is the lightning speed by which it is being transformed from sleepy bedroom community to bustling town.

Thenagging byproducts of growth are everywhere. Rush-hour lineups to get over the town's only bridge have started to resemble the nightmarish traffic snarls that were thought to be the purview of much bigger cities.

Downtown is enduring breathtaking change at breakneck speed. Local mom-and-pop shops have withered as Wal-Mart, Starbucks and other chain stores spring up.

"You're losing some of the small-business flavour," said Aaron Brown, owner of main street's new San Carlos Caffee, one of the town's first fully independent coffee houses.

"But out of that came a new type of business,and I'm one of them."

Plan threatened

And while the town grapples with growth, the fire department lost five of its volunteer firefighters when Calgary went on a major recruitment drive this year to shore up its own over-stretched force.

Fire Chief Paul Kaiser said he can't blame anyone who leaves for full-time work elsewhere, especially when his volunteers are being asked to work up to 10 shifts and 80 hours per month.

The explosive expansion is threatening Okotoks' groundbreaking sustainability plan, which puts limits on the municipal boundary and caps population size at 30,000.

Thickets of new estate homes in the surrounding rural municipality are now tapping into the same fragile water source that caused Okotoks to get ahead of the curve in drafting the plan nine years ago.

The town's stated goal of expanding in an "environmentally, economically, socially and fiscally healthy way" are all being strained — and fast.

"It's a struggle to maintain the focus that we need to maintain if we're going to attain this sustainability level," Mayor Bill McAlpine said.