Aging Infrastructure on the Waterfront Is a Ticking Clock
The seawall along the Goderich harbour was built in the 1960s. For six decades, it has held back Lake Huron's waves, protected the harbour road, and served as the spine of the town's waterfront. Now it is crumbling. Cracks run through the concrete. Sections have shifted. During heavy storms, water finds its way through gaps that did not exist a decade ago. Engineers have assessed the wall and delivered a blunt verdict: it needs full replacement. The estimated cost is $14 million, a staggering sum for a municipality of 8,000 people.
Goderich is not alone. Across Ontario, waterfront communities are grappling with infrastructure that was built during the postwar boom and is now reaching the end of its useful life. Seawalls, breakwaters, municipal docks, stormwater outfalls, and sewer systems that have served reliably for decades are deteriorating, and the bill for replacing them is arriving all at once.
The Scale of the Problem
Ontario has thousands of kilometres of built shoreline infrastructure. Municipal harbours, public docks, and boat launches are found in communities from Kenora to Cornwall. Many of these facilities were constructed between the 1950s and 1970s, when federal and provincial governments invested heavily in waterfront infrastructure to support commercial fishing, shipping, and tourism.
The typical design life of a concrete seawall is 50 to 75 years, depending on the quality of construction and the severity of the environment. Steel sheet piling has a similar lifespan before corrosion compromises its structural integrity. Timber docks and wharves last considerably less, often 25 to 40 years, before they need replacement. By these standards, a significant portion of Ontario's waterfront infrastructure is either at or past the end of its design life.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has estimated that the infrastructure deficit across Canadian municipalities exceeds $175 billion, with water and wastewater systems accounting for the largest share. Waterfront-specific infrastructure is a subset of that figure, but it is a costly one. A single harbour reconstruction can run into the tens of millions of dollars.
What Happens When Infrastructure Fails
The consequences of failing waterfront infrastructure range from inconvenient to catastrophic. At the mild end, deteriorating docks and boat launches become unusable, reducing public access to the water and undermining the local recreational economy. At the severe end, collapsing seawalls can flood roads and buildings, damaged sewer outfalls can release untreated wastewater into lakes and rivers, and eroding shoreline protection can threaten homes and businesses built behind the structures.
In Collingwood, a section of the municipal breakwater that protects the inner harbour was severely damaged during a storm in 2020. The damage allowed wave energy to penetrate the harbour, damaging boats and docks inside the basin. Repairs cost $3.2 million, and the breakwater is now scheduled for full reconstruction within the next five years at an estimated cost of $18 million.
Sewer infrastructure is a particularly urgent concern. Many waterfront communities in Ontario have combined sewer systems that carry both sanitary sewage and stormwater in the same pipes. During heavy rainstorms, these systems can be overwhelmed, causing untreated sewage to be discharged directly into lakes and rivers through combined sewer overflows. The stormwater management upgrades needed to address this problem are among the most expensive infrastructure projects municipalities face.
Why the Money Is Not There
Small and mid-sized municipalities face a fundamental mismatch between their infrastructure obligations and their financial capacity. Property taxes, which are the primary revenue source for most municipalities, were never designed to fund the replacement of major capital assets. When the infrastructure was originally built, it was often paid for with federal or provincial grants. Those senior government programs have largely dried up or been redirected to urban priorities.
The result is that many waterfront municipalities have been deferring maintenance and replacement for years, sometimes decades. Each year of deferral saves money in the short term but increases costs in the long term, as deteriorating infrastructure becomes more expensive to repair and more dangerous to leave in place. Engineers call this the "infrastructure deficit," and it is growing faster than most municipalities can fund.
Asset management planning, which requires municipalities to inventory their infrastructure, assess its condition, and develop long-term funding strategies, is now mandatory in Ontario. But having a plan and having the money to execute it are two different things. Many municipalities have completed their asset management plans and discovered that the cost of maintaining their infrastructure in a state of good repair far exceeds their current spending levels.
Federal and Provincial Funding
Both the federal and provincial governments operate infrastructure funding programs that municipalities can apply to. The federal Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program and the provincial Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund have provided funding for water, wastewater, and community infrastructure projects. However, these programs are competitive, oversubscribed, and often focused on specific priorities that may not align with a community's most pressing needs.
Waterfront-specific infrastructure, particularly harbours, breakwaters, and shoreline protection, falls into an awkward gap between program categories. It is not quite transportation, not quite water and wastewater, and not quite community recreation. Municipalities often find themselves trying to fit their waterfront projects into program criteria that were designed for other types of infrastructure.
The federal Small Craft Harbours program, administered by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, funds harbour infrastructure in communities with commercial fishing activity. But many Ontario waterfront communities that once had active fisheries have transitioned to recreational boating and tourism, which makes them ineligible for the program even though their harbour infrastructure is just as old and just as deteriorated.
What Communities Are Doing
Some municipalities have gotten creative in addressing their waterfront infrastructure needs. Meaford used a combination of federal and provincial grants, municipal reserves, and a special area levy to fund the reconstruction of its harbour wall. Port Elgin phased its waterfront infrastructure replacement over a 10-year period, tackling one section each year to spread the cost. Harbour towns across the province are exploring public-private partnerships that would see private marina operators contribute to infrastructure costs in exchange for operating concessions.
Climate adaptation is adding urgency to the conversation. As water levels fluctuate more dramatically and storm events become more intense, waterfront infrastructure designed for historical conditions may be inadequate for the future. This means that replacement projects need to be built to higher standards, which increases costs further. Engineers designing new shoreline protection structures are now incorporating climate projections into their designs, resulting in larger, more expensive structures than those they are replacing.
The clock is ticking. Every winter, freeze-thaw cycles work on the cracks in aging concrete. Every storm tests structures that were built for a different era. The cost of doing nothing rises with each passing year. For Ontario's waterfront communities, the question is no longer whether to invest in infrastructure replacement, but how to pay for it before the infrastructure fails on its own terms.
