Minister signs order to limit development along P.E.I. shoreline, but province provides no details

A ministerial order to limit development within buffer zones on P.E.I. has been written up and signed by Environment Minister Steven Myers, according to a spokesperson for his department.

But the province has provided no details on what restrictions the order would put in place, saying that it's still working on an implementation plan, and that the order will eventually be made public.

On Dec. 1, during the fall sitting of the legislature, Myers said he would implement a moratorium on shoreline development until his department comes up with a new policy delineating what landowners can and can't do to protect their properties from coastal erosion.

That came in response to concerns brought forward by the Official Opposition and members of the public around particular projects, including a massive stone armour breakwater built to protect a new private home in Point Deroche.

The province has said that even though the new rock wall on the site was built within the buffer zone, construction was allowed to proceed because there had been a previous shoreline protection structure on the site.

Neither Myers nor anyone with his department was made available for an interview to talk about the new ministerial order.

According to information provided by the department, the province stopped issuing development permits in buffer zones in December, around the time Myers made the announcement.

"The ministerial order has now been signed and some permitting has resumed, but we are still working on the comprehensive implementation of the order," the spokesperson said in an email.

Licensed contractors with a blanket approval to conduct work in a buffer zone do not require a permit for specific projects on Prince Edward Island. The province has provided no information to indicate whether the ministerial order will change that.

When he announced the moratorium, Myers told the legislature he didn't want to prevent property owners from protecting their homes against another storm like post-tropical storm Fiona, or to "disallow people from putting stairs down to their beach so they can enjoy it and things like that.

"But what I will commit to is this: There will be a moratorium in place on any new development on the shoreline until we get this policy right."

Looking ahead to next steps

To figure out what the best approaches could be to protect P.E.I.'s coasts, the province is working with experts at UPEI.

"We need to figure out what are our top five solutions, or seven solutions, which can work for us, and then we need to evaluate [them] here," said Aitazaz Farooque, interim associate dean for the School of Climate Change and Adaptation at UPEI.

Farooque said the research will go on in two phases. The first would take four to six months, but the second phase, gathering data on each of the approaches, would take up to five years.

He said the school has already collected preliminary data suggesting promising results from efforts to build a "living shoreline" at Tea Hill Park, and from artificial reefs created in Souris to protect the shore there from waves.

Boyd Allen, with the Coalition for the Protection of P.E.I. Lands, said an "all-encompassing" moratorium on coastal development is needed. He said there was no "meat on the bones" of Myers' commitment or "a clear description of what it was" the minister was proposing in December.

Allen said Point Deroche is just one example of the province not following its own existing regulations. He said any new set of rules should be written into legislation, as Nova Scotia has been doing with its Coastal Protection Act, rather than built into a new government policy.

"It's clear that the process we are working with now for coastal development is compromised," said Allen. "We have an array of regulations that are not only not being complied with, but actively opposed.

"There are developments that are so far removed from the regulations, you don't know what they are anymore."