A project aimed at restoring a salt marsh ecosystem at the mouth of Mermaid Creek near Sidney has been cancelled due to complications surrounding riparian property rights.
Last month, the Peninsula Streams Society announced the cancellation of the program, which aimed to enhance biodiversity, improve water quality and mitigate coastal erosion at the marsh in Roberts Bay.
The regionally rare ecosystem provides blue carbon sequestration, important nutrients, water filtration, habitats for fish and wildlife, and natural protection for upland areas from strong storms.
According to the society, more than 70 per cent of the marsh has been lost since 1960.
In 2022, the society installed eco-cultural fencing along the banks of the estuary to help stabilise eroded materials, and to protect 500 Lyngby’s Sedges the society had planted from Canada geese grazing.
The second phase of the project included creating one metre-high clustered headlands to reduce wave energy from storm surges, adding about 4,000 tonnes of imported marsh and beach sediments, which would require a crown licence to build on the land.
“There’s a number of property owners who don’t like the project, just based on fear of collateral damage to the environment, lack of understanding and just fear of change,” said Kyle Armstrong, executive director of the society.
He said some of the property owners approached the province and threatened legal action against the province if the society were issued the crown licence because they felt the structures that would be installed would “infringe on their right to access navigable waters as riparian property owners.”
The provincial legal team made it a condition on the licence that the society would need signed consent from the property owners to proceed with the project.
With a deadline being the end of Summer 2024, the society and its funding partners felt it was the project was unattainable.
Moving forward, the society will continue monitoring the marsh, which Armstrong said has an estimate 50 per-cent annual erosion rate, “but the general trajectory is that it’s disappearing.”
They continue to explore options for shoreline protection and they plan on using $25,000 that may be given to them by the Town of Sidney for a stormwater management on the estuary.
