For losers in bids for federal cash to protect against climate disaster, fears remain

For communities where roads and homes are damaged in climate disasters, losing out on bids for federal help to protect against coming storms are one more blow from which to recover

For communities where roads and homes are damaged in climate disasters, losing out on bids for federal help to protect against coming storms are one more blow from which to recover.

Standing beside a wharf that is slowly being dismantled by Bay of Fundy tides, Dave Davies said Thursday it was hard to hear in June that Ottawa’s Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund had rejected his community’s $4.8-million request for aid.

The funding was to go toward strengthening seawalls and building a breakwater in Hall’s Harbour, N.S., while replacing and extending the dilapidated wharf. Now, Davies and other volunteers in the small town are left wondering where to turn for help.

“I’m rejected, dismayed, angry, all of the above,” said Davies, 89, who is the vice-president of the Hall’s Harbour Community Development Association. “The federal government has passed the buck to someone else down the road, and we don’t know who that is.” Volunteers with his association spent two years fundraising and then commissioning a conceptual design to protect the picturesque town from climate change.

He said the community’s anxiety about forecasts for higher sea levels and stronger storms only intensified after a July 11 downpour of about 110 millimetres caused a tidal river to swell and smash the causeway that connects the two sides of the village, home to about 300 people.

Rodger Cameron, owner of the town’s lobster exporting facility — whose 30 employees ship about two million pounds annually — said in a recent interview that since he set up the operation in 1995, his parking lot, “has been almost completely obliterated five times” by waves bursting over the existing seawall.

A spokesman for federal Infrastructure Minister Sean Fraser says Ottawa makes choices based on the best applications for the $3.8 billion put into the adaptation fund since 2018. But communities losing out argue there’s not enough money to go around for projects needed to protect essential infrastructure.

“Given the high volume of applications we have received … since its inception, we had to prioritize the strongest eligible applications,” said Micaal Ahmed, a spokesman for the minister’s office.