City receives $104K for climate adaptation strategy renewal

THUNDER BAY — The city has received six figures in funding to help with climate adaptation work.

Thunder Bay was one of 70 cities across Canada that received money to address climate risks, protect critical infrastructure and create more livable cities, according to a media release issued by the federal government and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, who administer the fund. The city received the money to renew its climate adaptation strategy.

City officials said they hope to have a new plan in place by December 2026.

“Over the next year, we will be conducting a series of workshops and engagement with residents and all of our stakeholders and Indigenous partners to conduct a risk and vulnerability assessment,” said Amy Coomes, program lead for the City of Thunder Bay’s asset management program.

Updating the climate adaptation strategy with a new set of actions to help respond and recover from the impacts of climate change, like extreme weather events, are also a major part of the new funding, Coomes said.

“This could be anything from different actions that we could prepare for, (like) forest fires coming closer to the city or flooding,” she said.

Noting the previous low-impact developments around the city, which use natural vegetation and other ways of mimicking natural landscaping to help manage stormwater runoff, Coomes said the stormwater management plan has been a success.

“We have learned a lot over the last 10 years with respect to the impacts of extreme weather events," she said. "So, updating those actions will be our main priority.”

Many of the updates around the city are based on flooding concerns, Coomes said.

“We have learned more about the behaviour around climate and how it is changing, and there's a lot of new climate projections,” she said.

“Our storm water infrastructure, in particular, is vulnerable to climate change.”

Over the last decade, Coomes said the city has done extensive work on separating the storm and sewer systems "so that those are not connected anymore — the stormwater goes directly to the lake,” she said.

The social implications of climate change also need to be considered, Coomes said, noting that it’s important to help community members while some areas of the city are hotter and more vulnerable to flooding.

“We need to think about everything that we own and how different climate impacts might affect those,” she said.

“Who's living there? What things can we do to help support those individuals, and making sure that they're prepared for, and able to respond to, extreme weather events.”

“We have the Lakehead Region Conservation Authority always doing exceptional flood mapping for the city so that we can understand where those outlying areas ares,” Coomes said.

Areas around the city's urban rivers and Thunder Bay's south end are particularly prone to flooding, she said.

“We're just making sure that all of our systems are prepared for extreme weather events.”

-With files from Leigh Nunan