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**Photo by Madeline Dunnett/The Discourse****** **_Editor’s note Oct. 23, 2024:_**_This is the first part of a story on the Anderton Arms apartments. Stay tuned for a follow-up article on flood management and climate change risk in the Comox Valley.__Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to read the story._ * * * Leanne Lawson was thrilled when she was able to find her own place in downtown Courtenay for $1,100 a month. The apartment may not have been in an ideal condition, but it was affordable, on the river and in the heart of the city. “I felt lucky,” she said. “So many people are having a tough time finding a place to live.” Renters in Courtenay are struggling to find housing, with reports of unaffordable rental prices, inadequate housing conditions and housing insecurity. Anderton Arms, the 10-unit affordable apartment complex that Lawson called home since 2021, offered solace to her and others who may have found themselves without a place to live in Courtenay. Lawson’s living conditions haven’t been ideal — the property is leaning, and she could see the slanting brick of the wall behind her shelves — but for her, a place to call home at that price in the city was enough to give her a sense of stability. But the stability was short-lived when news came that the City of Courtenay planned to demolish the building due to structural and environmental safety concerns. The building was no longer safe to live in and residents were given four months to find new homes. The City was in a position where it had no choice but to demolish it, and while residents of Anderton Arms were offered some compensation, finding new homes at a comparable price in the area felt like an impossible task. “For me, I can’t just move anywhere. I have to be able to find a place that’s affordable … I’m going to need to find myself a unit that I can afford and that I can find that’s subsidized, otherwise I might get pushed out of the province completely … I pay $1,100 for my unit … I just can’t afford a place for $1,600.” Warning signs appear in front and along the sides of the apartment complex. “If the retaining wall falls, it has the potential for: damage to and loss of personal property, damage to and failure of physical infrastructure, buildings, utility services and structures; injury to persons; and death,” the sign reads. **Photo by Madeline Dunnett/The Discourse****** ## **Retaining wall at ‘risk of failure’** On Dec. 14, 2023, The City of Courtenay announced that there was a “potential risk of failure” of the Anderton Avenue retaining wall along the Courtenay River. The wall was built on the river bank next to the Anderton Arms apartments, the now derelict Cona Hostel and Riverside Fit Park. “Failure may be a gradual slide toward the river, or a rapid collapse caused by a flood or seismic event,” a news release from the City says. Warning signs were installed in the area near the retaining wall, and private property owners who could have been impacted by this risk were notified by the City, according to the news release. A little more than six months later, on July 31, 2024, the City announced in another news release that it acquired the Anderton Arms apartment complex and had plans to demolish it, giving the residents four months to relocate. The news release also says the City will be expropriating the former Cona Hostel. For Lawson, demolition brought up concerns about whether she may need to leave Courtenay, since finding a place to live at a comparable price would be difficult. She is currently working, but is also supported by a rental subsidy from the Wachiay Friendship Centre. She said she is not alone in her struggle. Lawson’s neighbours in the Anderton Arms building include a senior with a disability and a mom with children who is worried about relocating her family. The compensation residents receive from the City of Courtenay is dependent on how long they’ve lived in the building. Those who have lived there longer are paying less than new tenants and may not be able to afford current market rates. That means newer residents, including Lawson, were offered less than a resident who has lived there for more than a decade. “We are people on the lowest income bracket, we don’t have any legal recourse to fight back or even take time to go to public hearings or figure out what they are doing with the property,” Lawson said. Luckily, Lawson has since been able to find housing support from the Wachiay Friendship Centre, which allowed her to stay in Courtenay. But the stressful process left her wondering why the City chose to demolish the building in the first place, instead of fixing it. “I get that the property is old and faulty, I really do. But part of me is like, so fix it, you know?” An old photo of the Anderton Arms Apartments, unknown date. **Photo courtesy of the City of Courtenay** ## **The history of the retaining wall** Jeanniene Tazzioli, The City of Courtenay’s manager of environmental engineering, told The Discourse that the decision to demolish Anderton Arms has been a long time coming, with talks of it beginning much earlier than when the news was announced in July. She explained that before the retaining wall existed, there was another log retaining wall built by early settlers in Courtenay. Homes and buildings were built along the side of the wall, including the Anderton Arms Apartments — built in the early 1960s — and what is now the out-of-business Cona Hostel. Eventually, this log retaining wall began to rot. In the late 1970s, the City received a grant to replace the log wall with a new retaining wall that is currently still there. Most of this retaining wall is a concrete wall along the river — with the exception of a portion of it that is next to the Cona Hostel and Anderton Arms. Tazzioli said that for the concrete wall to be built there, the buildings would need to be demolished, because installing the concrete section required excavation in those areas. At the time, the City decided to accommodate the buildings by placing a sheet pile section along that portion of the retaining wall. Sheet pile retaining walls are not built to withstand the same pressure that concrete wall piles can. The retaining wall near the Anderton Arms apartments in August, 2024. **Photo by Madeline Dunnett/The Discourse****** ## **Land threatened by ‘a complex web of underlying conditions’** Tazzioli said another complication in the city’s management of the retaining wall took place in the late 1990s, when the province passed the Dike Maintenance Act which classified the retaining wall structure as a regulated dike. In 2003, the province transferred responsibility for dikes and management of floodplains to local governments. This meant the retaining wall became a regulated dike, and the City became responsible for it. Tazzioli said records from the City confirm that residents of Anderton Arms raised concerns about the condition of the wall in 1998. “They had noticed cracking in the concrete beam on top of the wall, and were concerned. The City completed a geotechnical review of the wall and determined the structure was stable at that time,” Tazzioli said. Construction work along the Lewis Park Dike in Courtenay, unknown date — likely late 1970s or early 1980s. **Photo courtesy of the City of Courtenay** Follow-up geotechnical assessments and structural assessments were completed in 2008 and 2016. Following an emergency repair in 2016, the City began quarterly monitoring of the wall. These assessments found a complex web of underlying conditions that threatened the land that the Anderton Arms apartments were on, revealing just how unstable it was. For example, the original log wall remained behind the sheet pile section and was rotting, and the river was washing soil out from behind the wall. “Over time, what we’ve noticed is that … the sheet pile section and the concrete section of the wall have been compromised by erosion in different ways,” Tazzioli said. For the sheet pile section, the City found that with the change of river flows, the soil that supports the building washes out from behind the walls, creating sinkholes. Given the fact that river levels change daily with the tides, seasonally with weather and unpredictably due to impacts of climate change, this adds to a complex array of management issues. ## **‘We can’t keep fighting the river’** The City has been filling in the sinkholes to counteract the erosion, but Tazzioli said that isn’t a long term solution. “We’re reaching a point where we can’t keep fighting the river,” she said. “The river compromises the wall, the wall can’t hold the soil, the spoil compromises the foundation of the building and the building is leaning. It’s very challenging.” Tazzioli said that while the City preferred to try and save the building, repairing it would only be a short-term solution to a larger problem. “That was our preferred approach,” she said. “One of the challenges is that the building is shifting because the land isn’t stable.” The building is also not seismically sound. “If there were an earthquake, it is at risk of collapse,” Tazzioli said. Fixing the building would require a large-scale excavation to stabilize it and Tazzioli said the City isn’t sure if the building would withstand that. In 2016, engineers installed a riprap buttress — stacked rock that helps mitigate erosion along shorelines and steep slopes — along the retaining wall to stabilize it. But at the time, Tazzioli said the regulator that the City was working with was hesitant to provide approval to install more structures in the area. Tazzioli said the City is also thinking about the future of erosion and flood risk, with the primary risk at the Anderton Arms site being erosion. “We’re seeing the river and erosion is accelerated with increased flow rate. So when we have big storms and the river is flowing faster with more water than it had before, the erosion happens faster and it can wash more land away,” Tazzioli said. The secondary risk is flooding. The wall isn’t much higher than the height of land, so it doesn’t offer much flood protection. For this reason, removing the wall does not change the level of flood protection,” Tazzioli said. Courtenay has a history of flooding already. In 2009, a state of emergency was declared after heavy rains flooded low-lying areas of Courtenay. The city also evacuated 54 people from Maple Pool Campsite and RV Park, which is about 1.5 kilometres from Anderton Arms and is also near the river. Another state of emergency was declared in the Comox Valley in the winter of 2014 to 2015. A total of 200 millimeters of rain fell in a 36-hour period and resulted in multiple road closures and the closure of the Fifth Street and Dove Creek bridges. ## **Vulnerable populations more likely to experience adverse impacts related to climate change** Tazzioli said the plan, after demolishing the Anderton Arms building, is to restore the natural shoreline of the area. She confirmed that there are no plans for more housing to be built in the area, and that the city is looking for examples of other restoration sites for the future of this property, such as the nearby Kus-kus-sum. But this apartment building is a canary in a coal mine as impacts of climate change are being seen everywhere. According to Statistics Canada, certain populations are more likely to experience adverse impacts from climate change. They include Indigenous people, women, new immigrants and cultural minorities, low-income residents, people with disabilities, medically dependent people and transient populations. Together, these groups make up a significant portion of Canada’s population, according to Statistics Canada. In an August 2024 study from The Journal of Climate Change and Health, researchers say LGBTQ+ people will be more susceptible to adverse impacts of climate change, and have fewer resources to recover from climate disasters, due to health and socioeconomic factors. The study found that LGBTQ+ people and communities are “disproportionately located in high-risk areas prone to flooding, poor air quality, mosquito-borne diseases, and extreme heat.” In the U.S., LGTBQ+ people have disproportionately settled in Western states. In Canada, Nova Scotia, Yukon and B.C. have the top three highest rates, respectively, of people who reported either being transgender or non-binary. And Greater Victoria has the highest proportion of non-binary people in Canada according to reporting from Capital Daily. While the Journal of Climate Change and Health study is U.S.-based, Statistics Canada data confirms that more than 50 per cent of LGBTQ+ people in Canada are in the lowest personal income brackets (under $32,000), compared to about 37 per cent of non-LGBTQ+ people. Statistics Canada also says a higher share of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults in Canada reported having functional health difficulties compared to their heterosexual counterparts. This means they face health issues that restrict their functioning and hinder their ability to perform tasks or activities. These restrictions can impact a person’s work and social life. These factors can make LGBTQ+ people more susceptible to impacts of climate change as they dictate where they can afford to live and work, and how their health might be impacted by climate change-related issues such as poor air quality. Alongside being low income, Lawson added that her identity as a trans woman also means she was considering moving to a city, which may offer more anonymity and give her space from the bigotry that often comes with living in smaller communities. “I think it would be beneficial for a person like me who is trans to live in a city. The only reason why I was living and wanting to stay in Courtenay was because this place was very affordable. If I am going to pay market rental price of today I might as well move to the city,” Lawson said, before getting the news of receiving the subsidy from Wachiay Friendship Centre. Lawson said she is grateful for the support she’s getting from the City of Courtenay, but that it doesn’t negate the fact that her situation is difficult. “Before I had this place … through most of COVID, I was renting rooms and it was pretty rough, constantly living with all these strangers,” Lawson said. “I’m grateful for the money, I am … it’s just like … having people make decisions for you like you’re not in control of your own life … Just a bunch of people with money making that decision for me.” ## **How do we account for climate change in development?** Courtenay flooding in 2014. Anderton Arms apartments can be seen to the right of the bridge. Lewis Park is the large area that is flooded to the right. **Photo courtesy of the City of Courtenay** “Relocation is not something that the city of Courtenay has faced a lot of but it’s common in other communities,” Tazzioli said. “We are referencing best practices out of the City of Victoria and the City of Vancouver.” She said the City has looked at all the information from Victoria and Vancouver and took their tenant relocation policies into account when determining what is most suitable for the situation with Anderton Arms. While she cannot get into specific amounts due to privacy reasons, Tazzioli confirmed that compensation depends on how long the tenant has lived there. The City is also working with M’akola Housing Society to understand the housing needs of each of the residents at Anderton Arms. “We understand that monetary compensation may not be enough, so the M’akola Housing Society is working with residents to find housing that suits their needs.” Tazzioli said. She said something the city has been thinking about is how to manage this in a way that works for both short term and long term. “I think where we landed builds resilience for that longer term horizon, because if we just repair the wall, we would find ourselves in the same situation perhaps in 10 years, perhaps in 20 years. This started far before us when they put a log wall along the Courtenay river as a way of straightening it out, and we know that straightening rivers increases flood risk because they are not able to dissipate their energy as they would if they were left in a natural meandering state,” Tazzioli said. Read also: Downstream: The Discourse investigates solutions for Cowichan Valley water “So we really want to make sure we are taking effective action so we don’t just keep perpetuating the risk and perpetuating the problems.” Future phases, she said, seek to remove the wall from along the river to make space for the river and create habitat and recreation opportunities. “The way we are thinking about flood resilience and managing risk is that if there were a high water event or a flood, we don’t want it to be disruptive to the community,” Tazzioli said. In the future, the city is aiming for the flood water not to disrupt critical infrastructure and compromise anyone’s home. “That’s what we are working towards.” **_Editor’s note Oct. 23, 2024:_**_This is the first part of a story on the Anderton Arms apartments. Stay tuned for a follow-up article on flood management and climate change risk in the Comox Valley.__Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to read the story._

The Courtenay River in August, 2024. **Photo by Madeline Dunnett/The Discourse****** There’s no silver bullet when it comes to managing flood risk and damage, but using a variety of tactics over time could help. That’s what the City of Courtenay is doing as part of its flood management plan to protect infrastructure and homes as climate change-related flood events become more frequent and severe. The City of Courtenay was built alongside the Courtenay River, with many low-lying sections of the city situated within the river’s floodplain. Floodplains are areas adjacent to a river or moving water, and their geography places them at high risk for flooding and erosion. #### How has the City of Courtenay’s growth changed the river? Floodplains provide rich soil that supports agriculture, but building so close to (and within) one also puts areas of the city at risk when flood events — which have occurred throughout history and are becoming more severe as the climate changes — take place. The river and its surrounding lands have been stewarded for thousands of years by ancestors of the K’ómoks First Nation — descendants of the Sathloot, Sasitla, Ieeksen, Xa’xe and Pentlatch. Many surrounding areas get their namesake from the Éy7á7juuthem, Kwak̓wala, and Pəntl’áč languages — including the Puntledge River and the Tsolum River. Prior to the arrival of settlers, the Courtenay River meandered into its tributaries and floodplains as water levels changed throughout the seasons.**** But it has since been choked by various man-made walls or structures, and much of the surrounding vegetation has been removed to support industry. In recent years, extreme precipitation, storm surge and sea level rise have also increased flood risk to the City of Courtenay. As a response, the city is working with consultants to understand the risk of flood to the community and come up with strategies to reduce risk. “We don’t want to fight the flood water,” said Jeanienne Tazzioli, the City of Courtenay’s manager of environmental engineering. “We want to ensure that our infrastructure is designed for the flood risk that we face in the future.” She added that this includes shoring up buildings as well as making sure roadways and the city’s sanitary lift stations — pumping stations that move wastewater from lower elevations to higher elevations — are functioning amidst floods so people don’t lose those services. Although the City of Courtenay can’t predict exactly how flooding will impact it in the future, it has spent time looking at past events, different climate models and other flood plans to try and understand what future flood events may look like and mitigate them. ## **How to plan for future flood events** A state of emergency was declared in both 2009 and 2014 due to heavy rains and flooding that caused bridge closures and evacuations in the community. More recently, the demolition announcement of the Anderton Arms apartment building due to erosion and flood risk highlights the consequences of constructing buildings that are not designed to withstand environmental risks. In 2023, Courtenay announced it would be developing a flood management plan. The plan was built on the bones of the City of Courtenay’s Official Community Plan, the CVRD’s Coastal Flood Adaptation Strategy from 2021 and regulatory flood maps — maps that are used to guide land use decisions and enforce local floodplain management bylaws based on projections of various flooding scenarios. These scenarios are based on different climate models, which are computer simulations of the Earth’s climate system and how it changes over time, according to the MIT Climate Portal. Since different levels of sea level rise and atmospheric changes will result in different flooding scenarios, it’s tricky to predict the most likely future, so the CVRD needs to consider various options. “[The CVRD] looked at a bunch of different scenarios,” Tazzioli said. “There are scenarios that consider different levels of sea level rise and different amounts of rainfall. We don’t know what the future holds, we can just model different scenarios.” After looking at dozens of scenarios, the CVRD landed on creating a floodplain map based on a sea level rise of one metre, and a rainfall event that has a 0.5 per cent chance of happening at any given year. Tazzioli said mathematically, this part often gets confused. It means that this rainfall event has a one in 200 year probability, but it is important to understand that just because the probability is a one in 200 year chance, it could happen at any given time — not every 200 years. The one metre sea level rise is also hard to predict. It is often estimated to occur in the year 2100 for the area, Tazzioli said. But she added that this is based on assumed rates of warming, and that warming is now happening faster than was previously expected, so it may be sooner. “We don’t [exactly] know when that will happen. That is the little asterisk,” Tazzioli said. The uncertainty of future flood events led the City to create more than one flood map. Tazzioli said the city created a set of consequence maps for two different scenarios to illustrate the impacts of flooding on people and culture, buildings and infrastructure, the economy and the environment. The maps it came up with represent flood risk placed in the present day, with a one in 20 year rainfall event, as well as the risk of a future flood event, with one metre of sea level rise. The future risk map showcases the worst case scenario, something that would be considered a rare event. Screenshot of a likely present-day flooding scenario. For more information and all of the flood consequence maps, visit https://www.courtenay.ca/EN/main/city-hall/projects-gallery/flood-management-plan/flood-consequence-maps.html . **Screenshot/City of Courtenay** “Although we want to be aware of that rare event, it’s kind of like that worst case scenario, but because there’s so much uncertainty, we would like to have some perspective on what that could look like,” Tazzioli said. ## **The floodplain boundary is fuzzy** Tazzioli said one of the difficulties while planning for flood risk is that the floodplain boundary isn’t always clear. It depends on different scenarios. Instead, it is a series of likelihoods. Some of these areas include a floodway and a flood fringe. The floodway is a section where the likelihood of flooding is the greatest. The flood fringe is the area on the edge of the floodplain that floods less often and may flood with less depth and speed. “People will [ask], am I in the floodplain, or not? Like, black or white? But the floodplain boundary is fuzzy, it’s gray.,” Tazzioli said. “We could have flood events that are smaller, we could have flood events that are more severe, it’s simply just an estimate of the scenario.” A section of the CVRD’s regulatory coastal flood mapping, with floodplain areas shown in yellow. **Screenshot/Comox Valley Regional District** There is no plan that will address every scenario at the same time, but the City has five different strategies for flood response: avoid, retreat, protect, build resilience and accommodate the flood waters. “In areas where maybe they remain undeveloped and there’s no hard insurance, we want to avoid development that would increase the risk,” she said. Retreat, she said, could happen in areas that have faced a high risk — such as where Anderton Arms is located along the Courtenay River. #### Why are these Courtenay apartments being demolished? “We could [also] protect things, trying to keep them dry. That’s mostly applicable on a small scale, like a lift station or a pump station,” Tazzioli said. “Then there’s the resilience building, so getting ready for an emergency, making sure people are prepared [and] they know what to do.” And finally, she said the city can accommodate and design its infrastructure and amenities within the hazard areas to accommodate the flood waters and reduce damage. “Those five tools used on different time scales address that flood risk,” Tazzioli said. Those living anywhere within the Comox Valley Regional District can take a look at the CVRD’s Regulatory Coastal Flood Map to see if their homes or businesses are located within the floodplain boundary. More information can be found on the CVRD website, including the PDF of the final report. For residents within the City of Courtenay’s limits, resources to reduce flood risk and build property flood resilience are on its website under its Flood Management Plan. There is also a page to view the flood consequence maps and a FAQ page.

A 25-year-old man has been arrested and faces charges including sexual assault and assault in connection with a break-in late last month where a Courtenay senior found a masked intruder in her home.

A 25-year-old man has been arrested and faces charges including sexual assault and assault in connection with a break-in late last month where a Courtenay senior found a masked intruder in her home.

The Comox Valley RCMP Major Crime Unit has made an arrest in connection with a serious incident reported at a Courtenay residence late last month.

The actual tariff rate is roughly half what the White House policies would suggest, according to a new working paper.