Can a shoreline be rebuilt?

The scale of the challenge is sobering. A 2012 provincial report estimates coastal adaptation in Metro Vancouver could cost upwards of $9.5 billion by century’s end. Local governments are scrambling for solutions, patching older structures, reinforcing shorelines and planning for storms that now arrive far more frequently than once a generation. 

Yet one of the greatest threats to the region’s resilience comes from something most people never notice: the quiet disappearance of sediment. 

A disappearing estuary  

For over 10,000 years, the Fraser River delivered sand and silt to its estuary, creating tidal marshes and mudflats that offered resilience during millennia of changing conditions. That natural cycle has been disrupted by more than a century of dredging, diking and river training. 

“Tidal ecosystems are experiencing a coastal squeeze,” Balke explains. “They’re getting trapped between rising seas and hard infrastructure such as dikes. Sea-level rise combined with the loss of sediment delivery means these ecosystems are losing ground.” 

What is lost

When wetlands disappear, flood risk climbs. Salmon habitat shrinks. Migratory birds lose their feeding grounds. Coastal communities lose a natural buffer that once rose with the tides. 

At the same time, a staggering number tells its own story: to maintain transportation corridors, nearly four million cubic metres of sediment are dredged from the Fraser Delta every year, more than anywhere else in Canada. Over half of it is dumped offshore where it is lost forever. 

Sediment that could rebuild wetlands is being treated as waste, but…what if we could do something else? 

Turning the tide with sediment

The Sturgeon Bank Sediment Enhancement Pilot Project was born from this question. Led by Ducks Unlimited Canada in collaboration with Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Tsawwassen First Nation, Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance, and Asarum Ecological Consulting, the project is testing a deceptively simple idea: return dredged sediment back to its natural destination in the intertidal zone, and let nature take it from there. 

Pilot projects, Balke notes, are essential stepping stones. They reduce uncertainty. They help municipalities and agencies see results before committing to large-scale change. And they can show that nature-based solutions can work in tandem with existing infrastructure, not in competition with it. 

The project begins

Between 2023 and 2025, crews worked with the changing tide, mobilizing during winter and fall work windows to pump sediment onto two carefully designed mounds on the mudflat. Over four separate events, over 27,000 cubic metres of sediment were added to the foreshore. That is roughly the equivalent of just over 2,250 dump truck loads of material reintroduced to the system. 

Each addition required exact timing, precise pipeline placement and constant environmental monitoring. Working in shifting tides and exposed coastal conditions, the team learned quickly that this kind of nature-based construction is both demanding and deeply rewarding. 

And they proved that it can be done. 

But did it work?   

Nature, as it tends to, responded in its own way. 

In 2025, scientists observed the emergence of new patches of microphytobenthos, sometimes called “mubblies,” in the areas where fine sediment had been placed. These microscopic communities form the living skin of tidal flats. They stabilize sediment, support food webs and signal that conditions may once again be shifting in favour of marsh regeneration. 

To an outsider, they might seem insignificant. To restoration ecologists, they are a whisper of possibility. 

Engineers are getting excited too, like Enda Murphy, assistant professor in coastal engineering with the University of British Columbia:

At the same time, the newly placed mounds seem to be behaving as predicted; settling and spreading but generally staying in place. Juvenile salmon continue to rely on the surrounding estuary as they transition from river to ocean. Every square metre of restored or stabilized habitat strengthens that narrow ecological bridge between freshwater and salt. 

Awards, risk and real-world proof 

In June 2025, the project received the Environmental Managers Association of B.C.’s Award for Remediation and Restoration, recognizing its role in advancing local nature-based coastal resilience and innovative sediment reuse. Before that, the project was internationally acknowledged among global examples of innovation with the Working With Nature Award from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure in 2024, where the pilot project received a Certificate of Recognition. Both honours reflect growing recognition that natural systems are essential infrastructure for the future. 

What made the pilot especially powerful was that it succeeded despite friction. The work demanded complex permitting across agencies and coordination between conservation groups, Indigenous leadership, engineers, regulators and funders. It refined understanding around sediment quality, transport timing and ecological risk in an environment where precision matters. 

Above all, the pilot project showed rebuilding has potential. Neville Berard of Northwest Hydraulic Consultants Ltd. observed:

Where do we go from here? 

Today, the lessons from Sturgeon Bank are directly informing broader regional conversations about coastal adaptation, sediment management and ecological restoration. One such effort, the Sustainable Ecosystem Enhancement with Dredged Sediments (SEEDS) initiative, is now working to connect science, design, policy and stewardship at a larger scale.  

Balke, Ducks Unlimited Canada and partners envision a Fraser Delta where dredged sediment is routinely diverted to rebuild marshes instead of sent offshore. A vision of engineered structures and living shorelines working together, each doing what they do best, and communities standing behind a unified sediment strategy that knits the region together, rather than scattering efforts across agencies and municipalities. 

This could launch a future where adaptation is regenerative, where nature and engineering collaborate, and where the mud beneath our feet becomes the foundation for a safer, more resilient life-filled coast.  

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This project is led by Ducks Unlimited Canada, with funding from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Province of British Columbia via the BC Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund, Pacific Salmon Foundation, Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and the Nature Force.