'It's totally disheartening': Cabin owners watch property flood due to broken culvert

As the rain started to fall toward the end of March, Doug Allen sensed the inevitable.

He moved the furniture out of his cabin. The unwanted visitor he had dreaded for years arrived about a week later. 

"The water was rising one inch per hour on the lake," he said in an interview.

The cabin Allen and his family have is on property they bought in North Kemptville, Yarmouth County, in 1988. It is beside Duck Lake.

It is a place where they went to swim and kayak, fish and relax. But in recent years the property has not been that relaxing and after water got inside the building earlier this month, Allen fears it won't be salvageable.

After years of losing hectares of land to the flooding, the cabin damage adds insult to injury.

"It's totally disheartening," said Allen. "We don't get a chance to enjoy the property anymore, and that's sad."

Perhaps most frustrating for Allen is that he's known for years that this could happen. Despite his many efforts to seek intervention through government departments and other means, nothing has been done.

Allen has watched things change for the worse since a culvert located down from his property on Golden Forest Road was damaged during a flood in 2010.

Through the years it's rusted and collapsed at one end, creating a backup. What was once a brook feeding into the culvert down from Duck Lake has become a sort of artificial lake, drowning trees and swamping the shoreline in the process. Allen isn't the only one impacted by the flooding.

"We've got a lot of tree loss and I've got a lot of property on the other side of the brook that's not accessible for most parts of the year," said Lindsay Burrill, who owns property near Allen.

Burrill's family has owned land in this area for more than 100 years. The damage in the last decade related to the flooding has limited his ability to hunt or do forestry work to produce firewood and get sawmill logs, he said.

The fact that Golden Forest Road is a private road has complicated the problem.

For years, tracking down the owner was a challenge, and efforts to get them to make repairs proved futile. The local municipality had no authority to get involved.

The culvert's condition affects fish passage for species such as gaspereau and American eel, but Fisheries and Oceans Canada has not intervened. Allen has documents he received through access to information showing internal conversations years ago about forcing the removal of the culvert, but nothing ever came from that.

Officials with the federal department have yet to respond to questions CBC News submitted last week.

"It's unacceptable," said Allen. "It really is unacceptable.

A spokesperson from the provincial Environment Department said in a statement that officials are aware of residents' concerns about the culvert. Officers have inspected the site through the years, most recently on March 19.

"This is a civil matter and our officers confirmed there is no violation under the Environment Act," according to the statement. "We have verified there is no release of siltation into the lake and have not found any evidence of negative impact to wildlife or the environment."

Glendon Ring isn't so sure.

Ring, whose family owns land down from the culvert on Kempt Back Lake, said he's observed changes in recent years that he believes are because of the damaged culvert and parts of Golden Forest Road that have washed away.

He has pictures from mid-March — three days before the last inspection by Environment Department staff — showing a dark cloud cast through the water that he believes is connected to the damage on Golden Forest Road.

"We used to be able to look in the lake and see bottom at 10-12 feet," he said. "Now, six-eight feet is all you can see bottom."

The lack of progress in getting a fix is frustrating, said Ring.

"Year after year, there's just no action and more damage from the affected area," he said.

He said the animal life in the cove has been affected. He said they used to see painted turtles every day, but last year they only saw a few.

With seemingly no recourse through the provincial or federal governments, the last best hope could be neighbourly assistance.

The Municipality of the District of Yarmouth recently passed a bylaw that authorizes it to fund work on a private road if two-thirds of property owners in an area vote in favour to have the cost of that work recouped through a tax measure.

The president of a private road owners association for a road not 50 metres from the damaged culvert said the approximately 40 members are having conversations about doing just that.

Although they don't have ownership over the culvert or Golden Forest Road, they have a right of way to be able to reach their respective properties, and what's happening with the culvert could eventually impede that access.

Allen hopes that might be the breakthrough he's been unable to reach after years of appealing to government officials.

John Sollows is hoping the same thing.

Sollows, a member of the Tusket River Environmental Protection Association, said the problem on Golden Forest Road should have been fixed years ago, given the situation.

"You have drowned forest going upstream for kilometres, flooded wetlands, interruptions to migratory fish coming up the stream and also it seems as if there's sediment going into the lake downstream," he said.

"It would be really good if everybody can work together to get the damn problem solved."