Kentville ICSP Report
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An Examination of Kentville’s Environmental History A Report for the Town of Kentville Integrated Community Sustainability Planning Group, Prepared by History 3383, Canadian Environmental History Supervised by Dr. David F. Duke Acadia University January 2010 Formatted by Laura Churchill Duke Table of Contents Executive Summary ................................................................................................ ii PART 1: HUMANS ................................................................................................... 1. Kentville Sanitary Sewage Management ...................................................... 1 2. Storm and Surface Water Management ..................................................... 10 3. Traffic and Transport ..................................................................................... 19 Summary Executive 4. Abandoned Industrial Sites in the Town of Kentville ............................. 30 5. Quarrying and Dumping in Kentville and its Environs .......................... 43 6. Recreational Spaces in Kentville .................................................................. 55 PART 2: NATURE .................................................................................................... 7. Domestic Water Supply and Protection in the Town of Kentville ....... 68 8. Severe Weather and Kentville; a History ................................................... 82 9. The History of the Kentville Floodplain .................................................. 100 PART 3: SURROUNDINGS .................................................................................. 10. History of Agricultural Change in the Region ..................................... 122 11. Pesticides: History, Present, and Possible Future ................................ 139 12. Kentville and the Cornwallis River ......................................................... 159 Page | i An Examination of Kentville’s Environmental History: Executive Summary – David Freeland Duke The report which follows is the work of twenty-four students from the Acadia University history course HIST 3383, Canadian Environmental History. We contacted the Mayor of Kentville, His Honour David L. Corkum, who in turn passed our information on to Brennan Vogel, the Sustainability Coordinator for the Town of Kentville. We suggested that the work of the Integrated Community Sustainability Planning team may be facilitated by an environmental “baseline” of the historical development of the community and its surroundings. (We were operating on the well- known historical principle that, “you cannot know where you’re going until you see Summary Executive where you’ve been.”) Mr. Vogel received the suggestion warmly and in turn provided us with a list of possible areas of investigation, topics that already have, or are likely to have in the future, significant sustainability dimensions to them. The chapters in the report are each aspects of the overall research, completed by pairs of students working on particular topics. The first group of chapters deals with aspects of the impact of human activities on Kentville’s environmental history; the second group analyses the impact of nature on Kentville’s environmental history; the final group of chapters are regional in scope, and are designed to provide a general understanding of the environmental history of Kentville’s surroundings and thus offer the reader a better sense of Kentville’s place in the larger environment of the Annapolis Valley. This is a comprehensive report: the students worked extensively in several different archival holdings, in Kentville, at Acadia University, and elsewhere. They consulted hundreds of municipal documents, including planning strategies, by-laws, council minutes, information reports, and so on, in the Kentville Town Offices. They interviewed or communicated with well over fifty individuals, formally and informally, ranging from local citizens, to scientific and economic experts at Acadia and elsewhere, to government officials both locally and in Halifax. In my estimation, this report is the product of well over seven hundred person-hours of research and its findings are worthy of your consideration. Major Findings: Human Activities in Kentville Kentville’s current sewer system is adequate for the community’s needs, both at present and for the foreseeable future; however, parts of the town are also suffering the consequences of past decisions that failed to split sanitary sewer lines from the storm sewer system. Failure to deal with the problems created by untwinned sanitary sewer / storm sewer lines will likely produce more significant challenges, both for the town in general and for affected residents in particular, if the severity and frequency of severe weather events increase, as is predicted by most General Circulation Page | ii Models dealing with climate change effects in the Atlantic Region. These challenges could well affect the sustainability of parts of the community of Kentville. Kentville has adapted well historically to dramatic changes in modes of transportation (the river railway road traffic) and in transportation patterns. The much-maligned one-way system in the downtown core has, popular perception to the contrary, worked quite well since its implementation. Greater attention should be paid to further stimulating a “walkable” community, especially in the downtown core; this again is a primary indicator of community sustainability. Although Kentville has been home to a wide variety of secondary industries over the last century, we found little or no evidence of negative consequences Summary Executive associated with previous industrial activities in the town. The policy to site recent industrial enterprises on the town’s outskirts, in one concentrated location, has led to a sustainable and rational development model; the relative proximity of the Industrial Park to the town’s fresh-water wellfield is, however, something that will require careful and vigilant oversight. Quarrying no longer represents a significant impact on the town’s environment, although it did so in the past. Today’s relatively small operations, working within provincial frameworks, represent a net benefit to the community and its surroundings as they provide locally-obtained materials for construction and other projects. Kentville’s record on municipal waste and dumping is very strong indeed; the decision to bring in a partner-contractor, Valley Waste Resource Management, has led to a highly efficient waste-management system, one that, after some initial concerns, has achieved exceptionally high levels of “buy-in” from members of the community. The close relationship between VWRM and the Town of Kentville in planning and implementing waste-redirection strategies is a hallmark of a sustainable waste management system, and the partners should be challenged to develop even stronger Reduction-Reuse-Recycling policies for the future. The Town of Kentville’s recreation policies and planning concerning the use of green space are admirable but not as effective as they could be. There is a clear hierarchy, both budgetary and in terms of maintenance and accessibility, across the recreational spaces within the town. While the Kentville Arena receives the vast majority of the Town’s recreational budget, ParticiPark and Oakdene Park are badly underfunded. Oakdene Park’s rehabilitation could be undertaken at a relatively low cost and would serve as a signal to the inhabitants of North Kentville that their neighbourhood is an important part of the community. A well-maintained and well-patrolled green space, possessing family-friendly recreational facilities, has a positive impact on community well-being, property values (and hence the tax base of the town), and therefore on the community’s overall sustainability as well. With a few budgetary adjustments and a commitment of the Town Council and Parks and Recreation to identify, fund, and encourage ways to increase Page | iii participation and revenue sources within less well-known greenspaces, the major imbalances that characterise the Town’s recreational priorities could be easily solved. The Town Council has clearly demonstrated such agility in its development of the Kentville Trail and even more so in its widely-recognised partnership with Ducks Unlimited Canada to rehabilitate the Miner Marsh. Major Findings: Nature’s Impact on Kentville The Town’s present water supply is resilient and well-managed, especially since the shift to groundwater exploitation. The supply is based on a diversified water source (bedrock and surficial aquifer access), is of a very high quality, and is subject to rigorous testing. Summary Executive However, the sustainability of the water supply is less than certain, given the limited knowledge of the aquifers on which the water supply rests, especially concerning recharge rates and the impact of severe weather events such as droughts. The system also faces potential threats from the concentrated location of the supply wells and their potential susceptibility to contamination, particularly from road salt or from an accident in the Industrial Park. Severe weather events, mentioned several times already, are a fact of life in Kentville’s environmental history: they have happened regularly in the past, and they will happen regularly in the future. Indeed, several models predict they will happen with greater severity and frequency. For much of the town’s history, response to natural disasters