YVR — the second-busiest airport in Canada — sits on an island that could be flooded due to climate change, a new Senate committee report warns
Vancouver International Airport is at risk of flooding due to climate change, according to a new Senate report that looks at critical transportation infrastructure across Canada to assess how it will fare in the changing climate.
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Vancouver’s airport, Canada’s second-busiest airport, is on Sea Island in the Fraser River delta, surrounded by 22 kilometres of dikes to keep the river and sea water at bay. But with sea levels estimated to rise by at least one metre in the next 75 years and an anticipated increase in extreme precipitation and storm surges, the report says the island could flood.
“The state of the Vancouver airport is Vancouver’s problem, it’s Richmond’s problem, but it’s also a problem for every person in Western Canada who drives through there — and it’s a really important freight airport too,” said Sen. Paula Simons, one of 10 members of the standing Senate committee on transport and communications, which wrote the report.
“This isn’t just a question of your ability to go to Maui. It’s a question of how we get goods and services across the Pacific to Asian markets and how we bring our imports in.”
Simons was shocked to learn the bustling, economically vital airport is at risk.
“As an Edmontonian and a Westerner, I had no idea how vulnerable the Vancouver airport really was,” Simons said. “I was absolutely thunderstruck to realize how vulnerable it is because it’s built on an island. And it’s lovely, but it creates an inherent risk at a time when sea levels are rising.”
Making bridges, buildings, roads and airports better able to handle extreme weather events driven by climate change — often referred to as climate resilience — is an increasingly pressing concern, reflected in the report’s title, Urgent: Building Climate Resilience Across Canada’s Critical Transportation Infrastructure.
“It was too big to do all the infrastructure in all the country, so we chose five areas that we thought were a microcosm of different challenges,” Simons told the Narwhal.
The committee’s review listed two pieces of crucial transportation national infrastructure in B.C.: the airport and the Port of Vancouver.
“Their locations make them susceptible to sea-level rise, storm surges and earthquakes that may significantly impact their operating capacity,” the report states. It recommends the federal government “immediately begin consultations on protecting (Vancouver International Airport’s) Sea Island location against storm surges and rising water levels.”
The Vancouver airport authority is aware of the challenges climate change poses to the airport. Christoph Rufenacht, the vice-president of airport development and asset optimization, told the Senate committee the airport has “remained largely resilient to weather impacts thanks to careful planning and proactive investments.”
He also said the airport will continue to “aggressively invest in our local infrastructure” over the next two to three years.
“That includes increasing the height of our dikes and upgrading the eight pump stations on Sea Island to install new equipment with improved efficiency and capacity,” he said during his December 2023 committee appearance.
By the end of the decade, the airport anticipates spending up to $60 million to raise its dikes and as much as $25 million to upgrade pump stations, according to Rufenacht.
“We feel very confident that the planning and infrastructure investment that we have now will serve us for those decades into the future,” he said.
Simons said it is worth planning now for the more severe climate scenarios Canadians could face in the coming decades.
“I’m not saying that the Vancouver Airport is about to sink into the sea. I’m saying that we need to be preparing to make sure it doesn’t sink into the sea.”