‘Doing nothing is not an option’
Annapolis Royal looking at expensive price tag to protect town from rising sea levels
As municipal projects go, a $4.1-million to $9.3-million price tag isn’t startling for many jurisdictions.
But for Annapolis Royal — population 530 and with an annual budget of about $2 million — it’s a lot.
The $9.3-million estimate is what it could take to build a seawall and redo the town’s wharf to protect Nova Scotia’s original capital from the rising sea levels, increased storm surges and coastal flooding caused by climate change.
The town on the Annapolis River and facing the Annapolis Basin recently received a report that confirmed everything that has come from other studies over the past quarter-century: sea levels are rising and the town — along with its national historic sites and historic district — are at risk.
The report looked at adaptation measures to deal with the threat of inland flooding, with a seawall the only viable option.
“There’s no lack of reports. Now it’s time to do something,” Mayor Amery Boyer said.
The estimated cost for a 1.3-kilometre seawall, which still has to go through a public consultation session, is more than $4 million. If work is needed to buttress the town’s wharf, the cost could reach $9.3 million. In any event, additional government funding still comes split in thirds between the municipality, province and Ottawa. That means the town could have to come up with between $1.4 and $3.1 million on its own.
The preliminary plan is for a wall that would run from the causeway to Fort Anne, and would see the waterfront boardwalk raised and then sloping land lead from there to the wall. While nothing is finalized, the town has already started writing applications for funding for the project.
Boyer said town residents know the project will be expensive, but “doing nothing is not an option.”
She said the town will look for other funding sources besides taxes because it’s not just the town that benefits from the wharf.
“Obviously, we’ll need some very smart fundraising activity that we’ll really have to get our heads around because we’ll have to do it the right way,” Boyer said.
“Even now, when we think of fundraising activities in the town for things, we have to be careful because you can’t make too many asks.”
The town will start to put money toward the project in the current budget now that it has a rough price tag. After the public has accepted the plan, work can get underway.
“I think the idea of phasing it in is our best bet, so a lot depends on how we can parcel it up,” Boyer said.
The groundwork will happen over the next couple of years, but it will be longer than that before construction could start.
Melody Tolson lives in town and runs the Red Onion Market out of rented space in an almost 200-year-old building on St. George Street along the water’s edge.
She said she knows the seawall will be costly, “but it feels like if we don’t, we lose the whole town. It’s very expensive, I am concerned with where the money comes from, but it has to come from somewhere.”
Without it, “we’ll literally be up the creek,” she said.
“We will wash away. Especially this building, because we’re so close.”
She said that “in some ways I’m not too worried about (the price) in that the 532 people who live here cannot possibly bear the full expense. It has to be spread out.”
If the town floods, she said, “It just starts the domino effect everywhere else.”
She said if the town, or at least its waterfront area, was built cheaply in the 1980s there might be an argument for just moving it.
“But how do you move Canada’s oldest town?”