Saint Andrews may restore a Campobello mudflat to get the town's wharf rebuilt

Saint Andrews council is thinking about spending up to $300,000 on a fish habitat restoration project quite a distance beyond town limits — on Campobello Island.

"It really feels like we have no other option," Mayor Brad Henderson told Information Morning Saint John.

The town learned last fall, shortly before it hoped to begin work replacing an aging wharf, that it would first have to come up with an offset project as mitigation for filling in fish habitat in the wharf area, said Henderson. 

All of the planning and approvals must be complete soon, he said, because federal and provincial funds committed to cover about 70 per cent of the wharf project will be lost if they're not used by the spring of 2026.

The only option put forth that has been endorsed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada is to restore a mudflat bay on Campobello, said Henderson.

"In principle, I don't think a municipality should be funding projects outside of its municipal boundaries," he said. "But in this case, if we don't do it, it is going to cost our taxpayers more money."

Without an offset project, the town would have to go with a different design for the wharf that would use more steel piles instead of a section of infill near the shore and would cost about $1 million more, he said.

There's no question something needs to be done, the mayor said

The old wharf has degraded to the point it has a weight restriction, and storm surges have been getting up over Market Square and into the downtown.

"I couldn't imagine visiting Saint Andrews-by-the-sea … without having whale watching, commercial fisheries, or just going and having an ice cream and walking down the wharf," Henderson said.

"It's iconic to our community and our community expects us to figure this out."

The town has been working on the wharf project since 2018. It went back to the drawing board in 2021 because of ballooning costs and has already had to ask the government to extend funding dates.

The push now is to have final plans and approvals in time to call for tenders in May or June, said Paul Nopper, town clerk and senior administrator, so that work may be completed in between the next two tourist seasons.

Ducks Unlimited was brought on board last fall to help with the mitigation project.

Sam Andrews, the group's Atlantic fish habitat biologist, said he had about three weeks to find a project before a DFO application deadline.

The town had pitched a few local options, but none worked out, he said.

One was to restore a section of eroding shoreline in the Pagan Point Nature Preserve, an area important to the Peskotomuhkati, or Passamaquoddy.

DFO found this was not an appropriate offset because it isn't fish habitat, Andrews said.

Another idea was to beef up the riparian buffer zone along a creek in the fitness park next to the water treatment plant. 

DFO said that area was not large enough and probably only a couple of species of minnow or stickleback would benefit, Andrews said.

Next he looked at Katy's Cove, where the tide has been mostly blocked off to warm the water for swimming. 

But that would be "too big and expensive of a project," he said. "And we didn't want to make alterations to a site that was so central to the community."

The St. Croix Waterway Commission suggested repairing some culverts along the river, said Andrews, but those can't be used as offsets because they're supposed to be fixed by their owners.

Mudflats are probably the most difficult marine habitat to compensate for, he said, because they're rare and can't be built.

DFO would have allowed an appropriate offset project anywhere on the New Brunswick side of the Bay of Fundy, said Andrews, but he found one about 20 kilometres away.

His proposal is to carve out part of a dike that's blocking water flow and fish passage to an inner section of Harbour de Lute in the Welshpool area of Campobello.

It would turn 21,800 square metres where "essentially nothing can live" back into mudflat and salt marsh fish habitat, said the biologist.

"I think given our timeline it's probably the best compensation project we can find."

Dianna Parker is a councillor for the Rural Municipality of Campobello and can see the area in question from her home.

She used to swim there as a teenager, when there were changing rooms, a concession stand and a playground, but the site has been abandoned for at least 25 years, she said, since the dissolution of the local chamber of commerce, which used to oversee it.

A gate built in the 1980s to allow fish and tidewater through hasn't been working and the water is stagnant, said Parker.

There's been some communication between Campobello council and the mayor of Saint Andrews about the mitigation proposal, she said. Her initial thoughts are that it's a bit "weird" for another municipality to be getting involved in a local project, but she doesn't expect objections from islanders.

An environmental watchdog known as the Fundy Baykeeper doesn't have any major concerns about the plan either.

Matt Abbott said the muddy area near the Saint Andrews wharf supports a lot of life, even when the tide is out, so, if some of that is going to be covered with fill for an important project like the wharf rebuild, it's a good idea to do something good for habitat elsewhere.

He considers Campobello part of the Passamaquoddy Bay community. 

Ideally, though, he said mitigation should be considered sooner, so there's time to find a local project with broad community support.