Houston Says Chignecto Flood Won’t Wait
The Premier of Nova Scotia says work on shoring up the dyke system on the Isthmus of Chignecto will be done with or without the federal government.
While the two levels of government have agreed on a plan, Tim Houston says the feds do not have the same sense of urgency to get to work as soon as possible.
Speaking on his regular monthly interview on Six Rivers Radio yesterday, the Premier said we will go it alone if necessary and worry about collecting the federal share later.
Houston says there is ample precedent and aspects of law that suggest the federal government is responsible for 100% of the cost, estimated at $400 million.
He said without the federal support, the Province would postpone other projects to get this job done.
The dykes and flooding control system was hand built by Acadian settlers nearly four hundred years ago. Rising sea levels and more intense storms now threaten the system on the main transportation corridor linking Nova Scotia with the rest of Canada.
The rebuilding plan was developed to prepare for rising sea levels, a crisis that federal officials believe offers ten years of leeway. However, Houston and most others close to the isthmus say the crisis is just one storm and one high tide away.
Officials note that we dodged that bullet during Hurricane Dorian and again with Hurricane Fiona. They say that had either storm hit land during a regular high tide, it would have been catastrophic.
Local officials fear that with the increasing frequency of major storms, it is not if but when one comes ashore on the isthmus during one of the twice daily high tides. Flooding would extend to ,parts of Amherst and to Sackville, New Brunswick. The train and truck link would be breached and more than $50 million in commercial traffic would stop indefinitely.
It would only be a matter of days before Nova Scotia grocery shelves would be bare, while other essentials entering Canada from the Port of Halifax would be stalled on the dock, unable to get to the rest of Canada.
It is that crucial link to Canada that makes the project a federal responsibility, one accepted by the Trudeau government, but without the sense of urgency felt in the region.
Click HERE to listen to the entire interview in our Morning Talk archives.
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