Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams, this is the Red Eye Podcast, produced at the studios of Vancouver Cooperative Radio. In our episode today, I talk with Stephanie Wood about an innovative pilot project to use salt marshes as a living dyke.
Speaker: The Fraser River estuary forms the largest estuary along the Pacific coast of North America. Estuaries provide vital nesting, breeding, and feeding habitats for many species. Eagles fly overhead. Sandhill cranes lurk in the salt marshes. Packs of coyotes howl at nightfall.
Speaker: Estuars also filter out pollutants from the water flowing through them, including pesticides, herbicides, and heavy metals. But sea level rise threatens these rich ecosystems and the surrounding countryside. To protect against this, a coalition has formed to try an innovative solution, creating a living dyke.
Speaker: Stephanie Wood is a squawk mesh journalist living and writing in North Vancouver. And she joins me today. Hello, Stephanie. Hello. Thanks for having me. Now, we have dykes already. What's the problem with that approach to sea level rise?
Speaker: There's a few issues that arise from traditional dikes that we have. First, the dikes that we have right now, the kind of big concrete structures, have kind of gotten in the way of traditional fish movement, migration, especially for salmon.
Speaker: And as we know, Sam and I are already having a lot of issues that they're facing from overfishing and from climate change. And as you described, salt marshes are really, really rich ecosystems that support a lot of life. And they're actually at risk partially because of dikes. As sea level rise is threatening our coastlines, salt marshes are trapped between rising sea levels and dikes.
Speaker: whereas they traditionally would have been able to move inland and water would push that sediment further inland and the marsh would expand. Now that the dykes are blocking them, the marshes are being, you know, threatened of being flooded by sea level rise because they have nowhere to migrate inwards and they're at risk of being flooded completely.
Speaker: which would pose huge consequences for life that relies on those marshes, in particular juvenile salmon who really rely on those marshes for when they're transitioning between freshwater and saltwater. So kind of much like sand dunes move inward, salt marshes also move inward, is that the idea?
Speaker: Traditionally, exactly. They would have been able to move inland and that natural process has been halted due to all the flood infrastructure that we built. You say this is something called coastal squeeze. Yeah, exactly. It's called coastal squeeze. There's nowhere for the dike to move and the sea level is only coming higher and squeezing it in between the dike and the rising sea.
Speaker: I mentioned in my introduction that you've formed a coalition to try an innovative solution called the Living Dyke. What is a Living Dyke?
Speaker: So a living dike is the idea that rather than building a bigger, higher concrete dike and repeating what was done before, the idea is instead to convert the marsh so that it can act as a living dike itself. So the design process is kind of still underway, but this coalition between the city of Surrey, the city of Delta, and Samoyamu First Nation
Speaker: have gathered together to launch this pilot project where they're going to find a way to deposit sediment at the marsh and gradually raise the elevation of the marsh so that it can actually act as a dike. And they're still in the process of deciding how they're going to deposit that sediment, but it could be deposited further out in the bay and the waves could bring the sediment in and naturally deposit it at the bank or they could deposit sediment right at the bank.
Speaker: And yeah, the idea is to deposit the sediment gradually over decades because if they deposit it too fast, it could threaten plant life. So then the bank itself, the marsh itself can act as a dike instead of having to build another bigger concrete dike.
Speaker: So you'd leave the big current concrete dike in place, but then you'd just have a gradual slope going up towards the dike? Yeah, exactly. Why are salt marshes effective against flooding?
Speaker: Yeah, they do a few things. Studies have shown that the bank, the marsh, will actually attenuate wave strengths, like the waves will, rather than crashing in really hard directly at the dike, which can cause wear pretty fast. They'll actually lose some of the strength as they build up, as they go up the slope. Salt marshes are also home to eelgrass, which provides some stabilization, some sediment stabilization.
Speaker: And then also just attenuating climate change in general, salt marshes that will just increase that biodiversity that is going to be necessary going forward into the climate change challenge. So it's not just the importance of preserving that kind of living ecosystem, but also it does a better job than a big solid dike.
Speaker: Eric Balk is a biologist that I spoke to for this story and he said these ecosystems are infrastructure was something that he said to me that really stuck out. You know that it's not that there is nature and then infrastructure that these natural processes have existed for millennia and did a really good job of mitigating floods before dikes ever existed.
Speaker: Will there be a high financial cost for LivingDike? So they're still working out the exact costing. But West Coast Environmental Law is sort of assisting. There's a roundtable about this project just kind of providing support for the project. And this law firm is a part of that roundtable. And they did a feasibility study. And they estimated it will cost, it could cost, between $175 million and $250 million.
Speaker: But then they also found that to upgrade the existing dike in a traditional sense and build it up higher would also cost at least 250 million. So the living dike could potentially cost less and is likely not to cost more. How long do we have before the salt marsh becomes irrevocably damaged by sea level rise?
Speaker: That is such a great question, and that's something that I can't necessarily answer for sure, partly because estimates of how quick sea level rise is going to happen really vary across scientists. You've seen different estimates. I believe that one of them said that it could be by 2100, the year 2100, that the sea level could have risen by a meter, but others say two meters.
Speaker: You know, some people say just because climate change is so unpredictable, it's really hard to actually to set a date.
Speaker: There is a pilot phase going on right now. What's happening in that pilot phase? So this Living Deck project is happening at Bound Tree Bay, which spans between the city of Delta and the city of Surrey. And they have chosen a couple smaller sites, because it's a very large bay, where they're going to start experimenting with the sediment deposits. So they got the funding for this project.
Speaker: They are working on design right now, which I heard will be like by the end of this year, hopefully. And then they'll launch into the actual pilot phase. But they said the idea is that the project will actually take place over three decades, over 30 years. So it's not something that will necessarily visibly be able to see. They said the point basically is that it will be so gradual and it just will preserve the marsh that you won't even really be able to see that it's happening.
Speaker: No, there are significant First Nations communities along the Fraser. Have they been consulted on this project? Yeah, Semiamu First Nation is particularly at risk and is right next to Banji Bay and their equal partner in this coalition with the city of Delta and with the city of Surrey.
Speaker: And then there's other First Nations that are really starting to kind of do the work on their own in a way. I spoke to someone named Murray Ned and he's a Councillor for Sumas First Nation. And he's also part of the Emergency Planning Secretariat, which basically is a Secretariat that is undertaking the work of preparing First Nations for floods and emergencies.
Speaker: just on their own because a lot of First Nations have been left in really bad situations. First Nation reserves have literally been built on the wrong side of a dike before us. They have absolutely no flood protection as a legacy of decades of colonial policies. And this emergency planning secretary is trying to work with First Nations to be able to develop their own emergency plans for things like floods.
Speaker: And I guess if you've just been given, in quotes, a certain amount of land for your reserve and then that land is eroded, then that's a pretty bad position to be in. Yeah, I spoke to another person from the Secretariat named Tyrone McNeil and he was saying that something we actually have to start thinking about now, which is kind of crazy, is about actually moving reserves because so many reserves are so close to the coastline and with sea level rise
Speaker: those reserves will actually have to be moved. And since it will take decades to do that work, he was saying that's something that should be starting to be planned and built and paid for really soon. The reserves that will possibly have to be moved, they are ones that are in the Fraser Valley or outside of there.
Speaker: Yeah, a lot of reserves along with the Fraser, because I was speaking to someone else from the Secretary, I didn't try to make sure I give credit to everyone that I spoke to, named Gillian Fuss, and she was saying that at the time that First Nations were confined to reserves, they were at their fishing villages, and obviously Indigenous peoples before would have different seasonal villages, and they just happened to get confined by Indian agents,
Speaker: when they rent their fishing villages and very close to the water. And as climate change becomes more of an issue and as sea level rise becomes more of a threat, it just means that those reserves that were so close to the water are just even more vulnerable to flooding. And a lot of First Nations really lack the infrastructure, have not been given the infrastructure that other communities have been. So the Semyamu Nation is working with this coalition, but other nations are trying to do this work themselves.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. And something that really came up when I spoke to both Murray and Tyrone was the need to treat First Nations as equal partners. Murray was saying that it's such a huge, huge, impending challenge with climate change that no individual municipality or First Nation or just the province can do this work on their own, that it will require a whole new level of collaboration.
Speaker: For example, the Living Dyke is requiring a collaboration between two different cities and the First Station, as well as some assistance from the province and the feds, and just basically not working in silos anymore. Because a lot of these areas, like the Fraser River, cross so many jurisdictions and faces such vulnerability that taking individual approaches won't really work anymore. That kind of collaboration will be necessary. It was really great to talk to you today, Stephanie. Thank you so much.
Speaker: It's been great to speak with you as well. And I really just want to also, again, extend a thanks to everyone who spoke to me for this story, like biologists and counselors and people from government really taught me a lot about this really underrated ecosystem.
Speaker: Thank you. Thank you so much. I've been speaking with Stephanie Wood. Stephanie is a Squakmesh journalist living and writing in North Vancouver, and she writes stories about Indigenous rights, the arts, sustainability, and social justice. Her recent article on the Fraser Estuary Salt Marsh can be found at thenarwal .ca. The Red Eye podcast is produced at the studios of Vancouver Co -op Radio.
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