2024-01-10
Province adds Carters Beach to suite of provincial parks
PORT MOUTON - Nova Scotia's government added Carters Beach, a large undeveloped swath of coastal Queens County property, to its suite of provincial parks.
In recent weeks, the provincial cabinet approved the designation of 97 hectares, the size equivalent of over 100 soccer fields, and declared the related three land parcels as Carters Beach Provincial Park.
The park includes 75 hectares at the end of Carters Beach Road that also abuts Central Port Mouton Road. The site includes the offshore Spectacle Islands (19 hectares) and, in South West Port Mouton, the three-hectare-sized Jackies Island.
In a news release, Nova Scotia's Department of Natural Resources and Renewables (DNRR) said survey and administrative work is still necessary. "New signs and outreach activities will help visitors understand and respect the park's unique cultural and natural features," reads the release.
An estimated $1 million will be spent on a new parking lot, trail to the beach, garbage facilities and accessible vault toilets, Sandra Fraser, DNRR's parks promotion officer, said in a phone interview.
It's the same work the department promised in the second quarter of 2023 but, Fraser said, there were delays in planning.
The public procurement for the work is expected to issued before April. Since the time of the interview, the province released a tender requesting bids to complete paving, trail and other work on Carter's Beach Road and related to a "Central Port Mouton parking lot" amounting to less than half a kilometre. The deadline for bids is Jan. 17.
Adding Carters Beach to the provincial park system, Fraser added, qualifies it for basic amenities, creates an opportunity for low-impact recreational use, while giving it protection under provincial parks law.
"It's a very beautiful natural setting there and people use it," she said, adding DNRR is pleased to be "able to support that use and make an impact."
The park will be a day-use only area.
The provincially-owned and ecologically-protected site of coastal and forested dunes, is known to attract hundreds of visitors on long weekends in the summer, for example. The main route to and from the beach, Carters Beach Road, became so commonly clogged with parked vehicles belonging to beach-goers that parking had to be restricted to one side of the road. The main beach lot can only hold about a dozen vehicles.
In 2022, a public meeting about beach management heard concerns about vehicular traffic, washroom availability and habitat conservation.
Region of Queens Municipality Mayor Darlene Norman said the province's decision widely panned nor praised by the community.
"Many recall the beauty of the park and recall decades ago when it was relatively undisturbed, however, the huge awareness and attractiveness of the place and lack of supporting infrastructure has been having negative effects," she said in a phone interview.
"Now, with the parking, washroom and trails; those matters will be resolved. It's a beautiful area and I believe many people will welcome this understanding that something had to happen in order to protect the area and surrounding community."
The site "will be managed as a natural environment park so its unique environmental and cultural heritage can be protected and appreciated for generations to come," DNRR said in the release.
"The area features some of the highest dunes in Nova Scotia, as well as salt marsh. It provides habitat for colonial nesting birds, the endangered piping plover and at-risk lichen, moss and orchids."
The province will need to put a strong emphasis on staffing the park to ensure it meets environmental protection goals, Norman suggested.
