The Town of Okotoks is seeking public input on its Environmental Master Plan.

Environment and Sustainability will be hosting an Open House to hear ideas, and feedback from residents on what Okotoks' environmental future will look like.

The Environmental Master Plan is a long range environmental plan for Okotoks, which looks at all aspects of the natural world, from energy, water, waste, emissions, food production and even construction.

Dawn Smith, Town of Okotoks Environmental and Sustainability Coordinator, says there will be a few ways to provide suggestions at the open house.

"We'll be having some brief workshop sessions during that time if people would like to sit down for about 15 minutes to partake and discuss some ideas with their fellow citizens, otherwise they can just pop in, read the boards and add some informal feedback."

Over the past few weeks the Town has been posting some different ideas to get the conversation rolling around what residents would like to see from the plan, including banning plastic bags, and allowing tiny homes.

Smith says it's wonderful to see so much engagement on those postings, but hopes residents will come out to voice those strong opinions Saturday.

"Those aren't necessarily things that we are doing, they are just ideas that are out there that other places are doing, and we just wanted to get the discussion going. The intent behind those was to pique interest, so a lot of them are quite controversial on purpose, to get people to come out. While the Facebook comments are great, we need people to step into the next phase of conversation, and that is in a more in depth look at the open house."

The Open House collecting value based information is the first phase of the Environmental Master Plan, Smith says once the data collected is organized into a draft plan it will be put out to gather more feedback.

"The next stage is for the consultant to start to create actual policy and action planning. Then we'll be going back to community in the early new year to test how they feel about the actual action items that are coming from those concepts."

The Environmental Master Plan Community Open House will be held Saturday, Nov. 25 at the Okotoks Recreation Centre's Community Room from 2:30 to 5:00 p.m.

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