Coastal Protection Act doesn't do enough for climate change, advocates say

As Nova Scotia nears completion of the long-awaited Coastal Protection Act, some advocates say there's a hidden part of coastal development that has been left out of the legislation.

The Coastal Protection Act regulations will set out site-specific horizontal and vertical setbacks that dictate how close private property owners can build to the coast.

But the act does not address setbacks for the septic systems and wells associated with those developments, which advocates worry could jeopardize the act's ability to safeguard the shoreline from the impacts of climate change. 

"If we keep houses back to a safe elevation and distance, and not regulate the septic systems and wells, those are two very essential parts of having any kind of development," said Will Balser, coastal adaptation coordinator with the Ecology Action Centre. "By only regulating the location of the house, we're only protecting half of the actual development."

In Nova Scotia, roughly 50 per cent of all homes use septic systems. But for coastal properties, the effects of climate change can compromise those systems; sea level rise and coastal erosion can make septic systems less effective, or cause them to fail altogether. Failed septic systems contaminate groundwater and coastal environments.

Wells are also vulnerable to saltwater intrusion, where ocean water mixes with groundwater.

Septic systems are currently regulated under the Environment Act, which does set horizontal setbacks from watercourses, said Mike Kofahl, staff lawyer with East Coast Environmental Law. 

But in the regulations as they're currently written, he said, "there's no vertical setbacks at all, which is one really important feature of the Coastal Protection Act. That not only do you have to build a certain distance away from the coast so that you're not at risk, but you also have a certain height because if you have things like a storm surge, it doesn't just go inland, it goes up."

Kofahl said it's also concerning that mobile homes are not covered by the regulations. 

Kofahl said advocates raised the issue of septic systems early on in the consultation process for the act because they're already seeing signs of the impact of failed septics on coastal environments; for years, East Coast Environmental Law has heard from people who are observing the effect of failed systems.

"After a storm, or after a hurricane, people are smelling something, and it's the septic system or septic runoff or raw sewage, that's just been washed back up onto the surface and [has] contaminated water."

Contaminated water isn't the only way septic systems can potentially impact the coastal environment; advocates worry that not addressing the regulations around septic systems could inadvertently make the problem worse.

People with coastal lots will now have to build farther from the water; for those with small properties, this could mean putting their septic, instead of the house, close to the water.

"So now you're more at risk of having saltwater in your water. Now, maybe instead of a massive storm, you just need a regular storm, and you have raw sewage in the ocean, because [the septic system] is even closer than it was before," said Kofahl. "So it's just trading issues."