Public input sought on port

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

The Yarmouth Port Authority is looking for input from the public on what direction Yarmouth’s port and waterfront should be heading in.

A public meeting is being held Monday, June 9 as part of a master plan study being undertaken for the port. The goal is to have a document in place by early fall that can serve as a business plan.

The meeting gets underway at 7 p.m., and will be held at the Rodd Grand Hotel.

Port manager Dave Whiting says the port authority has been working with the consultants, MacDonnell Group Consulting Ltd., on this issue. Aside from meeting with the public, the consultants will also sit down and talk with elected officials, business leaders, the Chamber of Commerce’s transportation committee and municipal planning staff.

“These aren’t presentation meetings, they’re working meetings,” Whiting says. “We’re looking for input from the various groups and individuals on their thoughts about the port and where we should be going.”

Asked if there are ideas on the table, Whiting says at this point that discussion is wide open, although there are things that have been ruled out. Like large cruise ships, for instance, that won’t work Whiting says.

“Even if you manage to do some dredging, the turning basin is too short,” says Whiting. “To get a large cruise ship in you’d have to dredge down another 10 feet and blow up half the other side of the harbour.”

Container traffic also won’t work because there is no rail line, and while moving things by truck is possible, it isn’t practical.

One thing the port is looking at is the possibilities associated with the offshore gas industry.

“I’ve talked to a number of people from different political parties, federally, provincially, and there seems to be a general consensus – that regardless of the feelings – that with the economics and the situation with oil and gas prices that that is going to happen. It might not be in three or four years, it might be in 10 years,” says Whiting. “So there’s a possibility there because of our proximity to the banks and the fact that we have an airport, and the facilities for crew changes like the hotels and the restaurants.”

Overall, Whiting says the idea of bringing public input into the port study is to decide what we want to do with the waterfront.

“Do you turn it into commercial? Do you put condos up there? Or do you leave it as port lands, recognizing that once it’s no longer port land it’s gone forever,” Whiting says. “Those things will be looked at because there are other ports that do it. Nanaimo in B.C., for instance, has a quite an eclectic mix of fishing activity, commercial activity – be it theatres, shops, residences – and it kind of works out there. Portland is a prime example of where it didn’t work.”

The hope is to come up with a plan and then tap into funding through the Atlantic Gateway strategy, the federal transportation infrastructure fund or ACOA.

But before that can happen, Whiting says there is a need to examine the port and the waterfront, and not just certain parts of it, but the entire area as a whole.

“We don’t want to be developing the port in one direction, while the rest of it is going in another direction,” he says. “We want to make sure everybody is on side and we’re not going in a wrong direction.”