The Nose Creek Water Management Plan was updated following the city council meetin on Moday.

Originally, the plan was put into place in 2008 to protect the water quality as well as water quantity.

Jill Curley, board member with the Nose Creek Partnership, describes exactly what the goals for the Nose Creek Water Management Plan are.

“It's a key plan for the protection of Nose Creek itself, water quality and (...) areas in Nose Creek. On a broader basis, all the way from Crossfield to the City of Calgary.”

The plan received an update due to new information and tools.

“It was written in the original plan to go back and revise it in ten years, knowing that we were in such a fast-growing area, the watershed has seen different pressures and there's been a lot of different changes, or updates, that constitute what makes good watershed management.”

For the past ten years, the plan has been successful in bettering the creek.

“There's been a lot of focus on implementation in those ten years. A lot of erosion control, increasing riparian protection with an improved understanding of how stormwater affects natural water bodies, like Nose Creek. The implementation of run-off volume control targets has been a key objective for the Nose Creek Partnership. With every two years in the plan, those targets were made more stringent for development so it led to improved water quality for Nose Creek.”

Curley says the new update will try to follow the original plan, just with newer advances.

“It continues on a lot of the same objectives with some new tools, some new information and a focus on continuing to gather more information. The plan itself is looking to increase the amount of monitoring what's happening in the watershed and the creek and to increase the tools that are available for water management.”

Nose Creek is an important part of Airdrie, and not just for the local citizens, but the local wildlife.

“It is a natural ecosystem. We've seen brown trout spawning in West Nose Creek, which is one of the main tributaries to Nose Creek and that's something that wasn't (...) known to be happening. We've improved the condition in order to allow brown trout to spawn, which is a fairly sensitive sport fish species that is using the environment.”

To help keep Nose Creek clean and healthy, Curley suggests locals think about what they’re washing away.

“Everything that's on our roads, our streets, our yards, that all makes its way directly to Nose Creek. It goes through our stormwater pond system, our stormwater management facilities and hits Nose Creek that way. The water, and anything else, whether it's pesticides, herbicides, used oil, everything that goes down the drain, hits Nose Creek. It's something for everyone to be aware of, that every piece that they put on their yard and on their home does end up in Nose Creek.”