The city’s Environment and Sustainability Committee met on the first day of August, and started that meeting with two presentations before moving on to their agenda of making sure we have enough clean drinking water.
The first presentation was from LungNSPEI, which gave the committee a look at the dangers of radon, the second-leading cause of lung cancer in Canada. Testing kits are $50 and the test takes about 90 days. The library also loans out less-good but better-than-nothing radon testing kits, but making your home safe from radon can cost a couple of thousand dollars, which is why LungNSPEI and the province have a grant to help cover the cost.
The second presentation was from Bird Friendly Halifax, giving an update on what they’ve done since the HRM declared itself a bird-friendly city in 2022—mainly some awareness campaigns and a pilot project to give out window stickers to prevent bird strikes. After the presentation, deputy mayor Cathy Deagle Gammon asked the presenters if there was more the city could or should be doing. She noticed that like most municipal declarations and strategic plans, the bird-friendly declaration had not led to staff reports into the possibility of making new developments consider birds in the environmental concerns section of reports. Councillor Kathryn Morse took it one step further and put forward a motion for the city to consider mandatory or voluntary bird-friendly design guidelines. This will get a staff report.
For the procedural nerds, Morse’s motion was in order despite not being given notice of motion at the last meeting because councillors are allowed to make motions about presentations they receive.
The environment committee also received a lot of information about the existing and planned coastal protection measures, and sent it along to council. Although this item had a staff report, it did not have a presentation, so this committee did not discuss things like the updates to the Regional Plan, the Extreme Water Level Report, the Flood Hazard maps, the ongoing Wave Runup mapping, the Baseline Climate Hazard Exposure maps, the Hazard, Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, or the work being done by the Green Shores Local Government Working Group or the Resilient Infrastructure Standards Group.
Finally, the committee received an update on the new Integrated Watershed Management Framework. This framework is being implemented because there are concerns with Halifax’s water quality and volume, and having clean drinking water and unflooded homes is generally considered a good thing. The city has 46 distinct watersheds, and city staff have selected Dartmouth Lakes and Nine Mile River watersheds to pilot this framework. This work will be overseen by a steering committee, and once the lessons from the pilots are learned, the framework will be adjusted and expanded. This work will require money, but one of the big things the pilot work is figuring out is what work needs to be done, and how much it will cost. This passed, and the work on the pilots will start Soon™.
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This article appears in Aug 1-31, 2024.