Gaspé couple fights to save ancestral home from coastal erosion

While warmer temperatures have been recorded around the world this summer, global warming still remains an abstract concept for some.

But in New Richmond, a seaside town of fewer than 4,000 residents on Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula, the effects of climate change are a constant source of concern.

Coastal erosion is accelerating, and it threatens homes, businesses, churches, the local high school, a seniors home, and even cemeteries, long established along the town's shoreline.

Now, local couple Bruce Willett and Avril Aitken are fighting back in hopes of saving their ancestral home, built in 1832 by Willett's great-great-grandfather.

"This home has served the family well for five generations," Willett told CBC News in a telephone interview.

"And we are preserving it for the sixth."

Protecting their land against erosion

Town officials informed the couple two years ago that they could expect to lose 10 centimetres of their property due to erosion annually, Aitken said.

At the time, they thought that wasn't too serious. But now, "there are these big chunks more than a metre deep that have just slid down," she said.

So they decided to employ a technique known as "rocking," bringing in 650 tonnes of rocks from a Gaspé quarry to build a barrier to try to protect a 100-metre stretch of land.

The entire shoreline measures 190 metres, but protecting it all would require them to order a costly engineering study and get further approvals from the municipality, Willett said.

So far, he said the rocking seems to have strengthened the 100-metre section of land in front of their home, but erosion is still eating away at the 90 metres that remain unprotected.

He is also planting vegetation, such as wild roses, which put down broad root networks, on the shoreline to try to hold the soil in place.

But Willett said he fears the clay underneath the 650-tonne rock barrier will swallow the rocks over time.

Quebec researchers studying the problem

Suzanne Derjza is a Université du Québec à Rimouski researcher who works with a program that is gathering data to help coastal municipalities manage the risks of coastline erosion.

The project, sponsored by Quebec's Environment Ministry, covers 5,000 kilometres of the province's coastline, including along the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, and the Gaspé coast.

"Erosion is basically a natural phenomenon," Derzja explained. "In some sectors, it is amplified by climate change."

The effects of climate change can be seen in higher high tides, lower low tides and violent storm surges. Warmer winters also mean there's less ice to protect the shoreline from winter storms.

"Rocking is one solution" to respond to coastal erosion, Derzja said.

The UQAR team has also recommended that municipalities move structures back from the shore and deny construction permits in at-risk areas.

Erosion could cost the province $1.5B, study says

A joint 2015 study by UQAR and Ouranos, a Quebec think tank that studies the impact of climate change, found that coastal erosion would cost Quebec $1.5 billion in damage to shoreline structures, roads and railways over a 50-year period.

But taking action to mitigate the risks of erosion would limit those costs, the study concluded.

To date, Transport Quebec has started to consolidate stretches of existing highways and changing routes to try to mitigate the problem, while 8,000 truckloads of rocks were also recently brought in to save Percé Beach in the Gaspé region.

Much of the beach was swept away after it was damaged by storms and high tides, but it has since been restored.

​In the meantime, back in New Richmond, Willett and Aitken say they hope they can preserve their home to one day be able to hand it to their daughters.

"It's just forever and ever and ever a beautiful spot here," Willett said. "It's a lot of work to maintain it [and] keep it up … but that's OK."