Reducing risk for the coast
HALIFAX — The provincial Environment Department is trying to ensure Nova Scotians no longer build homes in at-risk locations.
“The purpose of the Act is to protect coastal ecosystems by avoiding unnecessary interference with the dynamic nature of the coast,” said John Somers, the department's lead in forging regulations for the Coastal Protection Act that passed through the legislature with all-party support in the spring of 2019.
“It's also to ensure that new construction in coastal areas doesn't happen in locations where it is going to be vulnerable to sea level rise, coastal flooding and coastal erosion,” Somers said.
In a video seminar produced for the Ecology Action Centre in late summer, Somers said it's best described as risk avoidance.
“Early we got asked a lot and we asked ourselves this question, are we trying to protect the coast from people or people from the coast. The answer is we're trying to do both.”
To do that, the Act will determine a coastal protection zone and vertical setbacks, in essence a minimum building elevation. Valuations for the horizontal protection zone and the vertical setbacks are yet to be determined.
“The vertical setbacks will be different in different parts of the province and that is because it is measured from the mean sea level, not from the high-tide mark,” Somers said. “We have to adjust for tides around the province. It's much different in downtown Halifax or downtown Sydney than it is in Burntcoat Head.”
The boundary of the coastal protection zone “is one of the key things we're working on now,” and it will be some time before staff is ready to make a recommendation to government, Somers said.
“The general idea is that horizontally, it will be consistent across the province because it is just a trigger to have an assessment done.”
Inside the protection zone, property owners will require a site-specific assessment by a designated professional before being granted a building permit by the municipality in which they reside.
CBCL Ltd., an engineering consultant firm hired in the summer, is working on a Coastal Erosion Risk Factor Assessment program or tool. That tool will be used by designated professionals -members in good standing of an appropriate professional geology or engineering body — to assess potential building sites for the likelihood of erosion.
The Coastal Erosion Risk Factor Assessment will provide consistent evaluations for sites across the province, taking into account local factors that include exposure to wave action, sea level rise projections, slope stability and geological structure.
“That's the unique feature of the Act,” Somers said of erosion assessment. “Nova Scotia has 13,300 kilometres of very diverse coastline, conditions change sometimes radically within a few tens of metres.”
The assessment by the designated professional determines the risk level.
“The big idea is that municipal building permits will need a certificate from the designated professional to show that the proposed location of the structure is compliant with the act,” Somers said in the video.
The landowner pays out of pocket for the erosion risk factor assessment and it becomes part of the application to the municipality for a building permit.
“The lower the erosion risk, the closer to the ordinary high-water mark, in theory, you could build,” Somers said.
Businesses that require a proximity to the water like marinas will be exempt from the act.
When the Act was first envisioned, then-environment minister Iain Rankin said existing structures would also be exempt and only new builds would be affected.
Nancy Anningson, coastal adaption co-ordinator for Ecology Action Centre, said the act is very forward looking and “it is going to prevent you from building in dangerous places for the future but where it gets really tricky in terms of regulations is what if I have a structure within the coastal protection zone and I want to modify it.” Anningson said residents could try to trick the system by calling a modification a renovation when in reality it is basically a rebuild.
“You can get different permissions for renovation than you can for brand-new construction,” Anningson said.
“Then you can have Joe in Hubbards take his old beaten boat house and turn it into an Airbnb, a palatial twobedroom guest house that is right on the water's edge that he can rent out and it's a dangerous place. I am not exactly sure how they are going to handle that.”
Somers said that provision, too, is yet to be finalized.
“Certainly, we're not asking anyone to move a structure,” Somers said. “The nuance here is if someone wanted to significantly expand an existing structure, the act may have something to say about that. The principle here is we are trying to avoid additional risk, so if someone takes an 800-square-foot structure and turns it into a 2,200-square-foot home, that's clearly increasing risk. That's kind of the lens (with which) we're looking at it but if someone is just building a deck or a porch, we don't want to over-regulate.”
It will be several months before the regulations are completed and the act is proclaimed and enacted.
Somers said the intent is to make it as easy as possible for municipalities to implement the act.
“It doesn't mean that you can't build anywhere near the coast, but if you want to build in those areas, municipalities are going to need to make sure that you are above a certain elevation and you may require an assessment of the coastal erosion risks to determine a site-specific horizontal setback.”