New Brunswick needs to establish a set of coastal protection laws to properly keep our beaches safe and avoid another contamination issue as experienced at Parlee Beach last summer.
That was our Executive Director Lois Corbett’s message in a feature news article published by the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal on Saturday, June 24.
Noting the province is moving in the right direction by investing $2.9 million toward cleaning up contamination problems at Parlee Beach, Corbett said a more comprehension approach is required given the nature of development pressures along New Brunswick’s coastline today.
“If we only do this hit-and-miss, we won’t be able to protect all of the coast in New Brunswick,” Corbett said.
“There’s no excuse any more, because these development pressures won’t go away. Rising seas and more extreme storms give more reason to act as soon as possible.”
Corbett told the Telegraph-Journal she will be “like a dog with a bone” to make coastal legislation and regulation happen.
“It will be easier and more economically feasible to get a strict set of laws now than it will be to try to address contamination later on. The least expensive option is to put protection in now.”
Corbett said effective legislation should:
- Stop development on coastal wetlands, saying “we need to stop draining, filling them (wetlands) in and paving over them. That’s just really dumb.“
- Protect eelgrass (eelgrass is underwater vegetation that grows in wetlands and shallow bays. It helps prevent algae blooms, improves water clarity, and helps mitigate the impact of excessive nutrient flow into wetlands from human activities); and
- Provide assistance to coastal communities to develop their own plans.
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