NOVA SCOTIA
Coastal jurisdictions want help now
The province’s director of planning says that despite the impacts of rising seas and climate change, there is still time for Nova Scotia and its municipalities to plan for what’s to come.
Some of the municipal representatives who listened to Gordon Smith address a Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities conference session Wednesday aren’t convinced that time is on their side.
“Yes, crisis, we have to move quickly but we have time to do it in a logical, strategic manner,” Smith said after the hour-long session.
“The example I like to use is that buildings have a lifespan. If I have a fire hall that has a 35year lifespan left in it, I can look at that and say the water is not going to start lapping against the foundation tomorrow so … maybe purchase a piece of land over there so that at the end of the lifespan of that fire hall, we don’t rebuild it where it is, we build it over here.”
Smith said no more money would be invested in the aging fire hall but funds would go instead toward rebuilding it at a safer location.
The mayor of Annapolis Royal said retreating to a safer location is not an option.
“The town of Annapolis Royal is a natural historic district, it’s the cradle of our nation, we can’t just sort of pick up and move, so it’s a stand and defend issue,” Mayor Bill MacDonald said in the question period that followed presentations by Smith and Jennifer Duncan, a senior engineer with the provincial Municipal Affairs Department.
“Very recently, the updated flood maps show the town of
Annapolis Royal completely under water by 2050,” MacDonald said. “From our perspective, we need to do something now, whether that’s in fact a cofferdam or a breakwater, we’ll have to proceed.
“Show me the money. Really at the end of the day we’re all looking at finding money to do the things that we need to do.”
Joe van Vulpen, deputy warden of the Municipality of Cumberland County, also sounded an alarm.
“If you’ve driven out of the province, you’ve driven across the Tantramar Marshes,” van Vulpen said in describing a county that is almost surrounded by the Bay of Fundy and the Northumberland Strait. “Our economy in Nova Scotia, our food source for Nova Scotia, comes across that border every day to the tune of about $50 million.
“If hurricane Dorian had hit at high tide, with the wind from the south instead of the northwest, we’d probably be an island right now.”
Duncan began the two-prong session with an overview of the provincial asset management program, intended to develop tools and resources to help municipalities make evidence-based decisions about their assets.
“It is very important to know what your assets are, where they are and what condition they are in to begin with,” Duncan said, promoting the province’s Infrastructure Registry for Municipal Assets.
Smith talked primarily about the municipal flood line mapping project, an acceleration of the lidar mapping work buoyed by federal disaster mitigation program funding.
Smith said 93 per cent of the province has been flown and the mapping data is being processed. The province will be doing three test cases — in River John, Pictou County, Margaree River in Inverness County and the Salmon River in Guysborough County — before March to determine if the mapping program works for municipalities and to see if there are any gaps.
MacDonald said test cases should include the Fundy and not focus only on river watersheds but Smith answered that the province did not have available data on the Fundy.
Jim Winsor, a Kings County councillor, urged the province to push ahead with providing as much risk information as possible to the municipalities.
“I get a sense that everyone is out there trying to do their own thing,” Winsor said of all the municipalities. “How much effort is going in many directions?
“We’ve been talking. Progress generally seems slow.”
Rachel Deslauriers, manager of the Federation of Canadian
Municipalities’ outreach programs, said $60 million more in federal funding over the next four years has recently been allotted to help municipalities work on their asset management plan.
The funding will cover 80 per cent of eligible costs, to a maximum of $50,000, for individual municipal asset-planning projects. She said the federal government would leave municipalities to work within provincial regulations when applying for and using the funds..
“Basically what we are funding are adaptation plans or actions that you want to take in the short term to prepare for what is going to happen,” Deslauriers said, whether that adaptation be as specific as culvert replacements or much more wide-ranging.
In identifying risk, Smith said his department is co-ordinating with provincial staff who are drafting specific regulations to support the new Coastal Protection Act.
Smith said the lidar mapping could take several years but added that Nova Scotia is already a leader in its efforts to map its coastline and in other climate change initiatives.