For communities where roads and homes are damaged in climate disasters, losing out on bids for federal help to protect against coming storms are one more blow from which to recover.
Standing beside a wharf that is slowly being dismantled by Bay of Fundy tides, Dave Davies said Thursday it was hard to hear in June that Ottawa’s Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund had rejected his community’s $4.8-million request for aid.
The funding was to go toward strengthening seawalls and building a breakwater in Hall’s Harbour, N.S., while replacing and extending the dilapidated wharf. Now, Davies and other volunteers in the small town are left wondering where to turn for help.
“I’m rejected, dismayed, angry, all of the above,” said Davies, 89, who is the vice-president of the Hall’s Harbour Community Development Association. “The federal government has passed the buck to someone else down the road, and we don’t know who that is.” Volunteers with his association spent two years fundraising and then commissioning a conceptual design …