Atlas Road Utilization

Back in August the majority of council voted against granting Spray Lakes Sawmills a road use agreement. Why?
On Dec 2 2008 Spray Lakes and SRD approached council regarding their logging plan for the Atlas Road area.
We as council were concerned, for several reasons. Firstly we do not have a sawmill here any longer which used to be a significant employer in the area. So that leaves our three largest employers in the area; the BC Mines, Government (Municipal, Provincial, Hospital etc) and Tourism.
Obviously the Mines and Government will not be negatively effected by logging but Tourism could be if the logging is not done in the proper areas and in a reasonable fashion. Would we has a council have good reason to be concerned about the logging on Atlas Road?
Yes when we were initially approached there was concern about logging going up the side of the Crowsnest Mountain, and being visible from the highway, there was concern about buffer areas along the river. There was concerns on the impact of the logging on the tourism operators in that area. The greatest concern for myself was the way that the Kananaskis Road had been logged the previous logging season, to which both Spray Lakes and SRD agreed mistakes had been made. That things were being done to clean up that area and ensure that it does not happen again, I certainly felt that between SRD and Spray Lakes there was not enough communication back to make council comfortable that future logging practices would be acceptable to all parties involved.
That is why I choice not to support a road use agreement.
We were informed this week that SRD and Spray Lakes are trying to schedule a date to sit down with council and get a better flow of communications going between the three groups.
On the rumour of the closure of the Atlas Road itself, we has a council have been led to believe that after Spray Lakes finishes utilizing that Road to truck its timber that they have no interest in maintaining the road. If that ends up being the case, then it becomes any issue of anybody else stepping up to maintain the road.