Coastal development hot issue
Conservancy group wants agency established to deal with applications
By BEVERLEY WARE South Shore Bureau
ROSE BAY — Dee Hilburt says Nova Scotia needs a consolidated agency to deal with applications for coastal development.
"Nobody seems to be doing anything about it and the pressure to develop is incredible," said Mr. Hilburt of Kingsburg Coastal Conservancy. "Nova Scotia lacks a program of coastal management regulations to protect beaches and marshes and is generally reactionary to ecological matters."
He’s worried a house will be built on what his group believes is a tidal salt marsh in Rose Bay after a truck dumped a couple of loads of fill over the bank. The infilling was stopped because the wetland area is directly below the bank.
But Mr. Hilburt fears the wheels are already in motion for the landowner to build a house there.
"He wants a view of the ocean and that’s fair game, but there are places you should build and there are places you shouldn’t build and this is one of them."
The lot in question is about a half-hectare and opens up onto Sand Dollar Beach in Rose Bay. The conservancy group says it is both saltwater marsh and a freshwater wetland. Migratory birds and shorebirds are plentiful, including plovers, sandpipers, willets and blue herons.
The Environment Department, however, says only a small part is wetland and the area where the landowner wants to build is not.
"There is a small piece of wetland on the property but the owner has no plans to alter it," spokesman Bruce Nunn said.
He said a wetlands specialist with the Natural Resources Department went to the site with the Environment Department’s compliance and inspection co-ordinator and determined the area is in fact permeable flat, dry sand covered with high grasses.
"It’s not a wetland so if the property owner has a permit to build, there shouldn’t be any barriers to it," Mr. Nunn said. The Environment Department deals only with protecting wetlands, not development.
"This has all the hallmarks of how these things end up going so horribly wrong," said Jennifer Graham, coastal co-ordinator for the Ecology Action Centre, who questions why there is no buffer zone separating a wetland area from potential construction.
She, too, thinks the province needs a co-ordinated approach to monitoring and permitting coastal development.
"Existing regulations have so many flaws that unless someone takes a stand and actively prevents what’s happening, they can all stand back and say it’s somebody else’s fault," Ms. Graham said. "The responsibility never lies with one department."
Mr. Hilburt said he has spent "hundreds of hours already trying to get answers and the answers I keep getting are different depending on which department I’m speaking with."
Since the dumping incident last November, he has spoken with the departments of Environment, Natural Resources and Transportation, the area’s MLA and the District of Lunenburg. Nothing has happened at the site since, but property markers still stick out above the tall beach grass.
"A lot of people are moving here," Mr. Hilburt said of the Rose Bay-Kingsburg area. "There’s pressure to build anywhere you can see the ocean. People say we’re against development. We’re not against development, we’re against non-green development."