Sussex 'won't survive' without a $38M flood mitigation project. But who's going to pay?
Sussex says it has a foolproof plan to stop flooding. The problem? The price tag
A week after devastating flooding once again forced evacuations, caused millions in damage, and activated the highest level of the town's community disaster plan, it's clear the future of Sussex is at stake, according to Scott Hatcher, the town's chief administrative officer
"Without the solution, without the funding, without the mitigation plan — we're going to die a slow and painful death over the next couple of decades," Hatcher said.
Attracting new businesses and people, he said, won't happen "with this cloud hanging over our head. If we don't change that, we're simply not going to survive."
After historic flooding in 2014, 2019, 2020, 2022, and now 2024, it's clear climate change "is real, it's here — and unfortunately our residents are living it."
Sussex residents aren't the only ones living it. So are the people of Tantramar and the Acadian Peninsula — and across Canada, in municipalities from Merritt, B.C. to Calgary to Windsor, Ont., to St. John's.
But Sussex believes it knows how to stop the slowly unfolding disaster. The town's ambitious flood mitigation master plan includes a flood flow diversion channel at the town's eastern limits, another diversion channel on Parsons Brook, and stormwater infrastructure upgrades in the northwest and northeast of the town.
The first project in the plan — a $1.2-million berm behind Gateway Mall — was completed in 2019.
Buying some properties and restoring them to a floodplain will also be part of the solution. Up to 60 homes in a marshy area between Post Road and the back property lines of Bryant Drive may have to be purchased, Hatcher said.
"We have a solution, we've modelled it. We know it will work, and more importantly, it's going to work every time we need it," Hatcher said.
But with a $38 million dollar price tag, that solution doesn't come cheap — and if the past few years have been any indication, it's likely the next flood will arrive before the money does.
Online form 'glitch' causes delay
Like the creek that runs through the town, applying for flood mitigation funding in Sussex hasn't always run smoothly. It's been a five-phase, seven-year process just to to come up with the current master plan.
The first flood study was published in 2016. In 2019, a joint task force on flooding was struck between Sussex and nearby Sussex Corner (the two communities have since amalgamated). Sussex engaged the engineering firm Gemtech to assist with the assessment and mapping process.
Then COVID hit, tying up limited resources in the rural community and slowing down progress on the flooding file.
By 2022, the town managed to identify a federal funding stream under the Disaster Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Fund and was ready for the first application round in June 2022, Hatcher said.
But — maddeningly — that application was derailed by a "technical glitch." When town officials tried to submit the online form through the federal portal, he said, the "submit" button wouldn't work.
"We were seeking help from the IT people in Ottawa," Hatcher said. "We were in the process of working it out." But as they worked to address the glitch, the window to submit the application ended. Sussex was told to wait for the next intake in 2023.
That "frustrating" online form snafu, said Hatcher, amounted to another year lost.
The application was submitted in July 2023. It's been under review by Infrastructure Canada ever since.
More than $1 billion in federal funding is available in the current intake of applications for the mitigation and adaptation fund.
But it's unclear when Sussex — which is looking for $15 million from the federal government — will get an answer.
"We haven't had any outreach from the department who has our application, or from any federal ministers who can advance the file," Hatcher said.
The Infrastructure Canada website says only that the department "will communicate the results in writing as they become available."
'Please, God, do it quick'
Conservative Fundy Royal MP Rob Moore met with Sussex Mayor Marc Thorne and town officials on Saturday and again on Monday, after the floodwaters receded. Moore said he's raised Sussex's concerns with Infrastructure Minister Sean Fraser and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, but he's limited in what he can do as an opposition MP.
"At the end of the day, the decision on whether to fund a project or not rests with the government of the day," he said. "It's not up to a local member of Parliament," he said.
Cheryl Ward, who lives on flood-prone Stewart Avenue, said she understands how government works but finds it frustrating to see politics impeding urgently needed solutions.
Last Thursday during the flood, "the river was right here," Ward said as she gestured toward a dumpster — for homeowners' flood debris — in the middle of the street. "You could have put a boat in it and floated along."
"While we're waiting for them to decide — what's going to happen?"
What will happen to Sussex, specifically, is hard to say with so many major climate change projects competing for federal dollars. Strengthening and raising the Chignecto Isthmus, for example, is another imminently needed project. It is expected to take 10 years and cost $600 million once work gets underway.
In the meantime, Ward has spent tens of thousands of dollars of her own money on flood-proofing her home: five sump pumps, raising the hot water tank and electrical system, flipping her furnace horizontally, installing shelving and removable plastic wall panels.
"It would be nice to know that you've got the federal government, provincial government, municipal government all behind you to get it fixed, she said.
Anything, she said, would be better than nothing. "Please God, do it quick."
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