As part if its new Land Use By-Law the Town of High River has come up with a new flood map.

The Director of Engineering, Planning and Operational Services Reiley McKerracher says they tried to honour the provincial mapping which is still at the base of the town's map, but they also expanded the modelling work done with all the flood mitigation that's been done.

"We've put quite a bit of effort into getting that right and making it accurate and taking a close look at standards and we want to make sure that's incorporated into the new and Use By-Law, not just the provincial mapping," he says.

McKerracher says because it's based on the 1992 map it's basically the same but one big difference is the introduction of the Restricted Development Area, essentially areas that are not protected by the town's dyking system, where a higher standard is required.

"We've also changed a little behind the dykes so it's still using the provincial one-in-100 event, or roughly 750 cubic metres per second, but we've incorporated some of the work after the (2013) flood to look at things like mitigating you property and making sure water sensitive items are not in the basement like your electrical panel and things like that," McKerracher says.

He says if someone comes in for a redevelopment or wants to build an infill in the flood fringe, that's when they would look at the mitigation measures, including what exists in the building, what can be done, what makes sense and what's reasonable.

McKerracher says there's been a lot of issues pulling elevations from the provincial flood hazards maps as it relates to downtown affecting the street character, where there's a demo demolition having to raise buildings up substantially above other buildings so they wanted to address that.

The map will be changing since the elevations required in the map's flood fringe versus what elevations are actually there now,only a small portion would be impacted.

The map  and the Land Use By-Law public hearing is set for Monday April 3, at 3:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers.