Rising sea levels threaten YVR with severe flooding, Senate report says

A unique look at the Vancouver International Airport. (Chopper 9/Pete Cline)

Rising sea levels could prove catastrophic for Vancouver International Airport, according to a new report from the Senate of Canada looking at the risks climate change poses to critical infrastructure across the country.

The committee report released last week, titled Urgent: Building Climate Resilience Across Canada’s Critical Transportation Infrastructure, includes four case studies that represent different climate-related challenges: the Chignecto Isthmus between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada’s North, the Great Lakes St. Lawrene Seaway, and Vancouver’s airport and marine port.

For Vancouver’s people-and-goods movers, the key threats are flooding brought on by rising sea levels and increased precipitation, as well as earthquakes, according to the report.

YVR, Canada’s second-busiest airport, is built on Richmond’s Sea Island in the Fraser River and is surrounded by a dike system that protects it from flooding and erosion.

Putting that system at risk is the fact that sea level rise is predicted to be more than a metre by 2100 in B.C. and extreme precipitation is expected to increase by about 7 per cent for every degree of warming, Dr. Xuebin Zhang, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria, told the committee.

“This combination of sea level rise and increase in extreme precipitation will cause more severe flooding,” he said. “The confidence about this projection is very high.”

“I will mention Vancouver’s YVR airport, as it is located in the flood plain. This means that sea-level rise, storm surges, changing weather patterns and potential earthquakes may significantly impact the functioning and operating capacity of the airport,” Kees Lokman, a landscape architect at the University of British Columbia told the committee.

“It poses questions as to what might happen if the airport is not operational for days or weeks on end.”

For its part, the airport authority said it is full steam ahead on a project to upgrade the dike and drainage systems. Christoph Rufenacht, vice president of airport development and asset optimization of the Vancouver Airport Authority told the committee it expects to invest up to $60 million to raise dikes and up to $25 million for pump station improvements over the next few years.

“I feel confident that with the plans we have in place and the investment plans that we are continuing to execute on, we can operate this airport reliably, predictably and in a resilient manner for decades and decades to come,” Rufenacht said.

As for the Port of Vancouver, the report noted that it is less vulnerable to climate change than the airport as marine terminals are more resistant to weather events. But speakers to the committee expressed concern about the roads and railways that serve the region’s ports, which have taken severe and expensive beatings in recent years. The 2021 atmospheric river event, for example, brought B.C.’s supply chain to a halt.

Another theme that came up in the report was the need for better collaboration between various jurisdictions. In many cases infrastructure management in B.C. is up to a patchwork of municipalities, the province, the federal government, Crown corporations and the private sector.

“At Canada’s largest airports, the federal government owns the land, but leases it to not-for-profit airport authorities, who are responsible for operating the airports,” the report reads. “In the committee’s view, setting clear expectations about who pays for what is a critical component of any effort to move forward on this urgent policy file.”

The senate committee concluded with a number of recommendations, noting that “current efforts are scattered; there is no national co-ordination, no concrete plan and no predictable funding, and yet there is an urgent need to take action.”

It recommended the federal government make a list of Canada’s most critical transportation infrastructure, and “develop a concrete plan” to protect it and make funding available for climate change adaptation.

On the local level, the Senate suggested the government “immediately begin consultations on protecting the Sea Island location against storm surges and rising water levels.”