Rising Sea Levels and Coastal Flood Adaptation

The CFAS centred around a participatory, community-driven planning approach directly engaging residents, stakeholders, and other partners, including Semiahmoo First Nation, community and environmental organizations, business associations and groups, senior governments, farmers, the agricultural community, and neighbouring jurisdictions to identify short, medium and long-term adaptation options. The emphasis on community engagement was a strategic choice to ensure the adaptation options developed would be broadly supported, robust, transparent, and defensible. The CFAS focused on three low-lying areas to ensure no one in the community felt singled out, and to further demonstrate that this was a city-wide issue.

The first phase of the CFAS centred on extensive public and stakeholder engagement via multiple forms of outreach (workshops, youth events, compelling local narratives, etc.) to identify preliminary adaptation options. Phase 2 and 3 focused on evaluating the various options by assessing them across engineering, economic, social, cultural and ecological indicators. Then, stakeholder and partner input refined the adaptation options, which included the status quo, managed retreat, coastal realignment, building coastal barriers, and more. A more technical analysis in Phase 4 would refine a small number of robust, broadly supported adaptation strategies into preferred strategies based on cost and partnerships. Finally, Phase 5 integrates the preferred options into a long-term strategy for Surrey. Throughout the planning process, the CFAS team faced the challenge of making complex information publicly accessible. It was crucial to engage the public and listen to them in order to gain support for such a significant initiative.

As the CFAS project was really about creating a long-term plan for the city, there is not much to discuss regarding implementation of specific adaptation measures. However, the City of Surrey did closely follow the five-phase plan when developing the CFAS from 2016-2019, implementing the various strategies outlined in the planning phase to engage the community and construct a plan consistent with the shared values of stakeholders. Descriptive videos were utilized to help residents visualize the impacts of Sea Level rise. Workshops were held to engage and educate key stakeholders and public participants, including some bus and foot tours of the study area. Local residents, farmers, First Nations, and business owners were included as speakers at these events and in marketing materials to provide a compelling local narrative. CFAS also used community mailers, online surveys, social media outreach, photo contests, interactive story maps, youth events, stakeholder-specific workshops, and pop-up outreach stations in the most vulnerable communities.

With the final phase completed in 2019, implementation of the specific preferred adaptation actions is set to commence. The CFAS categorizes these preferred measures by timeframe and budget, allowing the City of Surrey to determine the optimal sequence of implementation.

The CFAS project has been praised for its community engagement efforts. Through a participatory process, the city heard from the public and several diverse stakeholders on the trade-offs associated with various adaptation options. This engagement from the community helped narrow down the list of measures in Phase 4 to ten adaptation options for coastal flooding. These options were further evaluated by the CFAS team to determine feasibility, timeframes, and costs. The finalized adaptation measures, grouped by timescale and budget, made their way into Surrey’s long-term strategy where a specific implementation strategy will be developed. This unique project, centred around the principle of community interaction and engagement, offered a few valuable lessons for similarly forward-looking municipalities:

– Building a shared, long-term vision for the community allows regions to get ahead of the risks associated with Sea Level rise
– Engaging multiple levels of government, especially when provincially and federally regulated infrastructure runs through the area, is an important step that can take a local project to the next level
– Engaging the public involves walking a fine line; people must see the sites and hear from local speakers to make the issue feel ‘real’. However, it is important not to scare people in the process – the narrative is important. Carrie Baron, Surrey’s Drainage Manager, offers great advice: “Don’t talk at your residents, listen to them.”

Since the publication of the case study, the final phase of the CFAS has been completed. With a comprehensive, long-term Coastal Flood Adaptation Strategy developed, the next step for the City of Surrey is to implement the specific adaptation measures outlined in the final document. Since the identified measures vary in timescale and cost, the city will have to make decisions regarding the order of implementation. The thorough analysis and grouping of the adaptation measures in the five-phase CFAS allows the city to make informed decisions regarding the prioritization of adaptation actions.

In addition to informing the long-term strategy for the City of Surrey, the findings of the CFAS will also feed into the Lower Mainland Flood Management Strategy, a regional study by the Fraser Basin Council. Thus, there are multiple constructive uses of the preferred adaptation measures that arose from three years of extensive community engagement and thorough cost-benefit analysis. Linda Hepner, mayor of Surrey, stated, “By getting ahead of the issue, and setting a direction now for where we want to be in 100 years, we are positioning Surrey to make smarter investments in the protection of residential neighbourhoods, businesses, significant habitat areas and provincially critical infrastructure.”

Link to Full Case Study

Additional Resources

• Coastal Flood Adaptation Strategy (CFAS)