Direction of shoreland development debate unsettling

One fine weekday afternoon this summer, I was treated to a barge ride along the east side of Aylesford Lake. We putted into Fancy Cove behind some diving loons. In the distance I could hear an uncrow-like cawing.

My hostess pointed out a tall pine tree with a young eagle perched in it. The husky bird was chatting with its sibling in another tree, oblivious to us.

It was one of those days when all is right with the world - at least in Fancy Cove. But some lakeside property owners are feeling a strong sense of unease lately with the possibility of the development of a large and pristine parcel of land on the water. I hear the American resource company that owns the 1,200 acres wants to sell, having stripped the trees it wanted.

How ironic that Kings County currently has a process underway to amend its policy on shoreline development. The final vote is due this month after a summer first reading and an Aug. 30 public hearing. It struck me, somewhat like the Railtown project in Wolfville, how often these changes go through during a season when half the population is on vacation or going away.

It’s hard to imagine how shifting the timeframe for developing shoreline to one to four weeks from four to six months could be a good thing. After all, Kings County has pledged to ensure the environmental compatibility of development within and adjacent to environmentally sensitive areas. Certainly Fancy Cove is a sensitive area, especially if a camp for chronically ill children proceeds in that vicinity.

Year-round resident Andy Bryski wants to organize cottage and permanent dwellers. With an umbrella group up and running, he'd like to push for long-sought protection for the area as a provincial green space.

Bryski samples the lake water as a volunteer with the Kings water quality monitoring program, which was established a decade ago to feed real data into an earlier model used to set lake development capacities.

“That hasn’t happened,” he told one of my colleagues. “What’s the rush with policy amendments, especially at a time when we’re not sure what the data is telling us? We’re concerned the changes are coming not from water quality monitoring, but from development and potential county tax revenue.”

Major ramifications

Bryski knows that shoreline development changes will apply to lake, river and Bay of Fundy properties, but development around Aylesford Lake would have “major changes and ramifications” via the watershed from the South Mountain right through to the Minas Basin. Nova Scotia Power has already utilized that link.

Two years ago the federal government began to promote a measurable progress toward sustainability. This deal uses gas tax revenues to fund community sustainability infrastructure projects.

In order to access such funds, municipalities are required to have an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP). This means a "long-term plan, developed in consultation with community members that provides direction for the community to realize sustainability objectives it has for the environmental, cultural, social and economic dimensions of its identity.”

This focus is prompting a huge shift; a real paradigm shift in thinking around some municipal tables. I've watched the change take place and suddenly development is not just about raking in more tax revenue. If government mandates an integrated approach, then environmental, cultural and social impacts all of a sudden have an importance they never merited before.

Integrated decision-making means economic activity cannot be disengaged from the biophysical and human environment. Sustainable development recognizes the interconnections and considers communities holistically as physical and human entities. This is a giant step forward.

Kings County needs to recognize that every decision to develop or redevelop land involves a decision about the environment. Another important principle is there should be a systematic investigation and analysis of information about the existing physical, natural and heritage environments that examines the relationship between all three of them.

In other words, eagles and loons matter.