N.S. downloads coastal management
Houston government promotes DIY vision
The Houston government has finally revealed its strategy to protect the coast: “do it yourself” coastal management. Coastal property owners, armed with a website of guides, a coastal flood hazard map and a decisionsupport tool, will manage coastal land use — bit by bit — on behalf of themselves, each other and the rest of us. Municipalities are encouraged to help them do the right thing.
Coastal management in this DIY approach stops at the highwater mark. The coast above the high tide line is mostly the domain of municipalities and private shoreline property owners — the DIY focus.
The Houston government hasn’t given itself much to do, except deflect leadership and abdicate responsibility.
The provincial government’s direct jurisdiction is the tidal zone, public land, environmental protection and, if it wants the role, co-ordinating and ensuring best practices in the use and management of the coast by all interests. The Houston government doesn’t want that particular job, which presents a problem because what happens on one side of the high tide line affects the health and resilience of what lies on the other side, with knock-on impacts for all of us.
The Houston government, or a future government, does have a few tasks, however. In a new initiative, the government will post signs in strategic locations stating what for most people is probably already obvious (but will also help visitors): “This road floods.”
It will keep working on mapping flood risk for municipalities. It will video record the coast — an erosion risk assessment, of sorts — to share with municipalities, showing where trouble lies ahead that they might want to address. The government has offered to help municipalities with some coastal land use bylaw texts, potentially 43 (or so) disconnected rules for a very connected environment.
Undoubtedly, coastal property owners are in a special position as coastal land stewards and many are striving to manage their shoreline sustainably while facing major shoreline impacts. Some municipalities are leading the way, too, in coastal protection. Each one — municipality and property owner — must rely on its neighbour, however, to also manage responsibly to ensure a healthy coast for everyone.
Education about risks and how to avoid them is essential, which is the focus of the Houston government approach. But how likely is it that problematic new coastal development, the kind that the proposed regulations of the Coastal Protection Act were designed to control, is really going to change based on this DIY coastal management approach? Hasn’t this approach led to many of our coastal problems in the first place?
The coast in all its complexity is a public good — the Houston government would have to agree with that. In its ‘plan,” we are told “the coast is an essential part of our shared identity as Nova Scotians” and in the Feb. 26 news release, Timothy Halman, minister of environment and climate change, proclaimed “Nova Scotians are a coastal people,” not “those Nova Scotians and others who own ocean shoreline are a coastal people.”
Among its many roles, government is responsible for providing good governance, care and management of our common resources and protecting the environment from the potentially harmful impacts of individuals (people and corporations) acting in their own interests. “Do it yourself” coastal management is a failure of government to protect the feature that most defines Nova Scotia and all Nova Scotians environmentally, culturally and economically and makes us who we are, namely, a coastal people.