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A low-lying Shannon Park site proposed for a community stadium is not a big concern for the councillor who represents the area.

“There is a certain distance from a shoreline, there’s a certain requirement,” Tony Mancini, whose Dartmouth East-Burnside district includes the Shannon Park property pegged for a potential 12,000-permanent-seat community stadium that would be expanded to 24,000 seats to accommodate a host Canadian Football League franchise.

“I heard some of the stories also that it is going to be flooded in 30 years, so we just leave it then?” Mancini said of the entire Shannon Park area, a 33-hectare former military property in north Dartmouth that sits adjacent to Tufts Cove and southwest of Burnside Park.

“We have to build and we have to anticipate that,” Mancini said. “I’m not too worried about that right now.”

Flooding fears were heightened by a report released two weeks ago by non-profit research group Climate Central, research that created a series of maps showing how storms might affect coastlines by the year 2050. The Climate Central map coloured the Tufts Cove area, including the proposed stadium site, in red as areas most vulnerable to flooding.

The research suggested that much of the land mapped in the area was actually lower in relation to sea level than previously mapped.

Gavin Manson, a coastal geo-scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada who works out of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, said the Climate Central data is reputable but it is intended to be viewed in a global context.

A report released two weeks ago classified the Tufts Cove area, including the proposed stadium site, as areas most vulnerable to flooding.

“We are still looking into it but what we can say now is there are areas where flooding is overestimated and we know there are areas in Canada where flooding is underestimated by their model,” Manson said. “In general, it seems that it is overestimating flooding.”

Manson said there is much better data available locally and regionally from Natural Resources Canada to measure land elevation and flooding potentials.

“Use the best available local data rather than a global estimate,” he said.

Manson earlier had projected the amount of relative sea level rise from 2006 to 2099 in the Halifax area to be 0.9 metres.

Ben Sivak, a principal planner with HRM, said the municipality is well aware of the vulnerability of the Tufts Cove area and other locations to flooding and storm surges.

“We have access to detailed mapping and predictions and we are in the process of getting more accurate mapping and relooking at sea-level rise, storm-surge policies,” Sivak said.

He said the municipality is responsible for regulating development within its boundaries and it makes sure that any residential development, apartments and homes, are above the shore risk, which is 3.2 metres above sea level.

“Especially in the Shannon Park area when you are talking about new roads and parks and trails, the risk to public infrastructure from a storm event is something that we would expect to be assessed going forward. There are policies to that effect already approved in the Centre Plan specific to a Shannon Park site.

“Those policies don’t include a stadium at this point because they were developed before that proposal came forward. We expect with a stadium, that that would still be looked at. We’d want to understand the impacts and the risks of sea level rise and storm surges.”

Sivak said municipal regulations do not mean you can’t have development in areas that lie lower than the 3.2-metre risk zone as long as plans to mitigate flooding were in place.

Just more than five years ago, Canada Lands, a Crown corporation that manages and sells surplus military properties, took over the Shannon Park site that once housed a small community including 421 apartment units, a Canex, two schools, two churches, four storage facilities, an arena, swimming pool, community centre and a large sports field. Most of the buildings have been demolished.

In 2016, Canada Lands applied for municipal planning approval for a redevelopment plan that included the potential for 3,000 housing units -- highrises, mid-rises and townhouses -- to be built over a 10- to 15-year period and a nearly seven-hectare green space. Approval was delayed as the Centre Plan wound its way through public hearings and planning processes. With the first phase of that plan recently passed by regional council, Canada Lands can reapply for approval of its redevelopment proposal.

Sivak said those planning documents started off with high-level direction and “we haven’t gotten to the details of the exact design of the roads and buildings.”

He said Canada Lands is looking at raising the land proposed for its development by bringing in fill. The stadium, which is proposed for a six- to eight-hectare plot on the northeastern corner of Shannon Park adjacent to the CN Rail tracks, might also require fill to raise its elevation. Nova Scotia topography maps show the stadium site to be about four to five metres above sea level.

“I understand the proposal at this point is to raise the buildings and roads,” Sivak said of the Canada Lands plan. “It doesn’t mean that some risk can’t be managed. If storm surge makes the stadium unusable for a number of days, it may be a risk that can be managed as opposed to people not being able to get to their homes. We tend to put more emphasis on lives, safety and helping people with risk in terms of where they live versus business risks.”

The proponents of the stadium and CFL team, Schooner Sports and Entertainment, this week amended a business plan that it had submitted to Jacques Dube, HRM’s chief administrative officer, and staff more than two months ago.

Although Mancini isn’t too worried about flooding risks, he has real concerns about the proposed stadium site and the infrastructure bill required to provide transportation and other stadium requirements at that location.

“I have heard all kinds of numbers -- $50 million, $100 million, $120 million -- I don’t know, that’s what we need staff to come back with,” Mancini said of infrastructure costs. Dube and staff will provide an assessment of the stadium proposal and a corresponding recommendation to council in early December.

“If Shannon Park is developed as it has been projected to be developed by Canada Lands, that infrastructure bill for the most part will be taken up by the developer, not us. Shannon Park is a prime space, I think it will be a beautiful, complete community once it is done but should we be paying the infrastructure on that? That’s my challenge.”

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