Water issue at Lawrencetown Beach shuts down shower, washroom, canteen facilities

Lawrencetown Beach is one of the most popular beaches in Nova Scotia, but a major water issue has lead to some end-of-summer woes for beach lovers.

The water problem has left the washroom, shower and canteen facilities closed to beach-goers.

“It’s really unfortunate, this is an incredibly popular beach,” said Glen Strickey, who is visiting the area from Newfoundland.

“Its utilized really, really heavily by the locals and not just the locals but people come from all over the place, it’s got quite the reputation as a surf beach and as a place to hang out.”

“I was puzzled,” said Eric Bobery, who is visiting from British Columbia. “If the toilets need to be flushed, you can use sea water to do that.”

“The kids probably could have used a washroom but it wasn’t a big deal, we were only here for a few hours,” added Laura Clarke, who was visiting the beach with her family.

Last year, the provincial government announced more than $300,000 in funding to fix maintenance issues at four provincial parks along the eastern shore.

WATCH: Provincial Parks along Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore set to get a big boost

The main building at Porters Lake Provincial Park has been repaired and new lighting has been installed. The water system at the park has also been renovated.

Clam Harbour Provincial Park has been made more accessible and a damaged boardwalk leading to Conrod’s Beach has been repaired. However, work to replace an aging boardwalk at Lawrencetown Beach hasn’t been started. The main reason? the hot summer has made the beach busier than usual.

“The boardwalk work there we decided to leave. Its been crowded. It’s been a very busy summer,” said Natural Resources Minister Lloyd Hines.

“Rather than the disturbance that fixing that boardwalk is going to mean, we thought we’d do some immediate repairs and leave the rest of it until it calms down a little bit.”

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Upgrading the water system at Lawrencetown Beach has also proved to be difficult. The well is located two kilometers away from the facilities. Officials say it’s too expensive to repair it, so a new one will have to be built.

“They ran into a little bit of a snafu with the water scenario. The infrastructure there is about 40 years old for the water service, so trying to determine exactly how we were going to tackle that with modern standard caused a bit of a challenge and caused some delays,” said Kevin Murphy, MLA for the Eastern Shore.

Originally, the work was supposed to be complete before this summer. With beach days now numbered, the hope is to complete the work — and stay within budget — by the end of the year.

“We haven’t maxed out our budget yet,” said Hines. “It was $328,000 and I think we’re probably in the 90 per cent spent range there, so we’re hoping to get the rest of those things taken care of.”