The Town of High River is hosting an open house to talk climate change and active transportation.

CAO Chris Prosser says climate change is seen all around us with extreme weather events and the town needs to be able to adapt.

"What we're trying to do with the climate change adaptation strategy is to start building an adaptation program to adapt to what we're starting to see on the ground and so that's going to make sure that our community is more resilient, do we change the building aspects of things to be more resilient to reduce the impacts on homes and how do we move forward with how to adapt to the ever-changing climate," he says.

The 2013 flood and the berms that were built to protect the town of one example of the changes and what the Town has done to prevent the same outcomes in the future.

"We're going to be doing a risk and vulnerability assessment as part of the process, getting people's feedback and trying to educate the public as well as schools and school children about the effects of climate change and climate variability on the community as it's moving forward."

The Town has received $80,000 in funding from the Climate Resilience Capacity Building Program to develop an action plan to adapt to climate change impacts and increase our resilience.

Active Transportation means modes of transport other than in vehicles like walking and cycling and what the Town can do to encourage that.

"Investing in some infrastructure associated with that, do we enhance bike lanes, do we widen sidewalks, do we increase inclusively by making sure all our sidewalks are accessible and we have the proper dropdowns in certain places," Prosser says.

"How do we encourage healthy communities by creating loops of our pathway system, and certainly a hot topic that I hear every winter is winter maintenance, is this something that the public really wants to see and really wants to pay for, increased winter maintenance on our pathway system to use it all year round."

Thanks to $50,000 in funding from Infrastructure Canada the Town can complete an Active Transportation Plan focused on cycling, walking and other active transportation.

The meeting goes Tuesday, January 17 starting at 5:00 p.m. at the Rec-Plex.