Waterton Springs Campground will serve its campers with one more season before they close down at the end of October 2017.

The popular campground located 3.3 km outside of Waterton Lakes National Park’s entrance often serves as overflow camping.

The property was purchased by the Nature Conservancy of Canada in 2007 with the objective to protect the land from proposed developments. The NCC kept the lease for 10 years and now they are preparing to decommission the campground and restore it to its natural state, but they have extended their closure date to include one more season to accomodate Canada’s 150th celebration.

Councillors, however, are disappointed by the choice made by the NCC and are sending word that the conservation organization should reconsider.

“This has a huge negative impact, not only on the MD of Pincher Creek but for all of southwestern Alberta,” Coun. Garry Marchuk said.

Waterton Springs Campground has served nearly 10,000 campers over a six-month period, Marchuk explained during the council meeting on Jan. 10.

“Not only is that a half million dollar business that is going to be set aside, but where are those 10,000 nightly campers going to camp?” he asked.

NCC’s regional vice president, Bob Demulder said he recognizes the impact that the closure will have on the area and he hopes the extended deadline will allow the community to seek out other opportunities to meet the increasing demand for campgrounds.

“We did approach the province of Alberta, Alberta parks and rec and we did approach Parks Canada with options that they might take it over,” Demulder said. “None were immediately interested.”

The reason for the disinterest, Demulder said, is most likely linked with the costly investment needed to bring the campground up to standards. An engineering report was completed by Stantec as the 10-year contract was nearing its end and they came back with a “fairly significant report.”

“The investment is into the millions,” Demulder said. “The conundrum we had as a land trust, or a conservation group, the funds I have aren’t available to do that.”

But, councillors Marchuk and Fred Schoening say that removing the already established campground may lead to undesirable environmental effects.

“It seems to me that if you’ve got a campground in place and you shut that one down, some entrepreneur, or some individual, is going to go to work and create another one at some point and it’s going to have a further effect on the properties surrounding it,” Schoening said. “But, if you already have it established, why not keep it?”

Marchuk is also concerned about an increase in random camping.

“We have such a small footprint there that they can operate in for camping in the Waterton area and last year with over half a million visitors — they can’t accommodate everybody — but, if they close that, it’s just going to create nothing but headaches down the road for us,” Marchuk said.

“We’re not terribly thrilled with this kind of an outcome too,” said Demulder. “But, we knew at some stage the community wouldn’t be thrilled, but at the same time we’re trying to stick to the knitting we’re good at and running the campground wasn’t one of them. We were actually quite hopeful that one of the parks would consider giving it their mandates.”

As for random campers, Demulder said that if the NCC goes forward with the restoration of the area, it will be properly marked as private land.

“The answer is we’re hoping that [random camping] doesn’t happen, but 95 per cent of people are very law abiding and you’ll have a few who won’t,” he said. “We’ll sign it appropriately….no camping will be allowed in there at all.”

The NCC did not take their decision to shut down the facility lightly, Demulder explained.

“We hope that the one year will allow the community to look for options is sufficient, especially given the fact that we can expect this to be a busy year with the Canada 150,” he said.

Demulder still has hope that provincial or federal parks will take an interest in the campground and said he will entertain the conversation if it comes up.

The closing of Waterton Springs Campground will make its mark, however, other campgrounds including Crooked Creek and Beauvais Lake will allow for people to stay near the national park.

Parks Canada’s visitor experience manager Locke Marshall said campsites within the park are already being booked up quickly with the anticipation of high volumes for the 2017 summer season.

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