How one N.S. town is preparing for storms

The Pictou town waterfront will be better prepared for raging storms when the new coastal protection project and storm water projects are completed later this year.

Pictou’s superintendent of public works Iain MacIssac said the work is in its early phase which calls for a water main replacement component now underway.

“We are doing that first and after about mid-October we will switch to the coastal protection project which should wrap up by mid-December,” he said in an interview.

According to earlier information released by the town, Caladh Avenue and the surrounding area will undergo extensive reconstruction to elevate the road network and strengthen coastal defences. The work will cover a stretch of the waterfront from behind the former Consulate Inn on the Jitney Trail to Coleraine Street. 

Key upgrades include raising the street level by two metres between Commercial Street and Market Street, installing new sidewalks, asphalt resurfacing and adding a multi-use pathway that includes a bike lane. 

The province and the municipality will each invest almost $2 million in the two projects.

However, MacIsaac said the province “was not too involved in coastal protection” with waterfront revitalization being mainly a town initiative. With the Northern Pulp mill ceasing operation and the town’s economic situation changing, the “waterfront was given a new breath of life,” MacIsaac said.

Hurricane Fiona impacts

In 2021, the town was taking a serious look at revitalizing the waterfront and developed a waterfront master plan. In 2022, when hurricane Fiona plowed through Pictou, it brought the coastal protection element into the project, MacIsaac said. 

Hurricane flooding resulted in considerable damage to the waterfront “so that is where the coastal protection element kind of came into the project and from there it was working on getting the design and funding in place,” MacIsaac added.

Although the provincial government had stepped away from a coastal protection act in 2019, it “relaxed all its data and studies on predictions and what they expected the future will look like weather-wise,” MacIsaac said.

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He said with the government data and observing the results of Fiona “it kind of steered the projects’ direction.”

MacIsaac said the coastal project will be “a long-term fix” for the water level but storm surge is more difficult to predict. He said storm surge is one of those weather events that require more planning on the mitigation side.

“They might have some sump pits involved to have water go to and pumped out or flood proofing buildings, things of that nature,” he said.

MacIsaac pointed out that addressing storm surge today on a Fiona-type event, and “if this work had of been done prior to 2022, we would not have seen any damage at all.” 

He said it would be naive to think the province will not see another major storm of the Fiona level in the next five-to-10 years.

“It’s hard to predict but reasonable to say we will get something worse,” MacIssac said.

Nicolas Winkler, coastal adaptation coordinator with the Ecology Action Centre, said what is being seen with the Pictou project “is the recognition that we are vulnerable on the coast,” and vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise and that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Winkler questioned since the province “walked away” from a coastal plan, 

“Are we going to see this (Pictou) as another piecemeal approach to coastal protection. I’m glad the town is getting some funding to address this but from a broader point of view are we kind of picking away at projects here and there and what does the bigger picture look like? On that front I still think we are lacking a good strategy,” he said.