Coun. Sam Austin wants to know the province’s position on a local company’s plan to infill Dartmouth Cove, but also if the province plans to allow the company access across provincial property to gain access to the area.
As the Examiner reported earlier this month, Transport Canada approved Atlantic Road Construction & Paving’s approval to infill Dartmouth Cove. In 2022, the company’s owner, Bruce Wood, applied to infill a 2.7-hectare water lot on Parker Street with rock from excavation projects.
There’s been opposition to the application from Austin, Darren Fisher, MP for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour, and a community group called Save Dartmouth Cove.
When the approval was announced this month, Fisher said via a statement to the Examiner and in an exchange on X/Twitter that the federal government and HRM can still “work together” to stop the infilling.
Atlantic Road Construction & Paving still needs more approvals, including from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), to go ahead with the infilling.
In an interview after Transport Canada’s decision, Austin said this to say about the X exchange with Fisher, and Transport Canada’s response in which it said HRM still has authority to respond to the approval:
It’s a total bullshit response. They issued the permit. How can we respond to something they just issued? When you issue a permit, because I ran it by our legal people today, too, because a resident asked, ‘could you make a bylaw now?’ Well, not when there is a valid permit. It’s like planning. You don’t get to retroactively come along after someone’s got the okay and change the rules on them. This permit is valid under the laws that exist now, so even if we did bring forward a bylaw next week or something, it wouldn’t affect this.
‘HRM should try to determine the Provincial position’
Still, there is the matter of accessing Dartmouth Cove. To get to the site, Atlantic Road Construction & Paving will have to cross properties owned by HRM and the province.
Austin told the Examiner this month that HRM doesn’t have to grant access to its land on the other side of Maitland Street, but the province could give access to the company via its property.
“That piece still has to be sorted and either the province or the municipality are going to have to provide access for them to easily infill,” Austin told the Examiner in our previous article.
Now, Austin wants to find out exactly the province’s position is on the infilling of Dartmouth Cove, and, more specifically, if the province plans to grant access to the cove via provincial property. Austin will be presenting a motion to Halifax regional council on Tuesday.
From Austin’s motion:
Despite community opposition, and representations from HRM, Transport Canada has given approval for the owners of PID 00114132 to infill the water lot in Dartmouth Cove. Transport Canada’s approval was the major regulatory barrier, but there is still a practical consideration of how the water lot is accessed. The water lot has no street frontage and the proponents will have to cross either HRM or Provincial property to carry out the work. HRM should try to determine the Provincial position on this matter.
Build Nova Scotia led the development of the master plan for Dartmouth Cove. Information on that plan can be found on its website here.
The Examiner contacted Build Nova Scotia for a response to Austin’s upcoming motion. Spokesperson Beverley Ware emailed this statement:
Atlantic Road Construction & Paving has several approvals it has yet to get. If it receives those approvals, the proponent would have to address a number of conditions set by Build Nova Scotia before we would consider granting a temporary easement.
We also contacted Austin for this story, but haven’t heard back as of publication time. We will update this story when and if we do receive a response.
The harbour is an ecosystem that has worked down the ages – right up until the Europeans arrived. It’s been downhill ever since. Surely there must be an easy way for the city to fix this and not rely on the feds or the province to do the right thing. We have seen that the feds and / or the province rarely do the right thing on any matter and on harbour infilling in particular.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: If Sam and HRM was the least bit creative, they would change the LUB to say that all property created since, and below the high water mark is automatically zoned parkland, and not available for development.