The Cape Breton Regional Municipality is prepared to send a delegation to Ottawa to lobby for repairs to the crumbling Gabarus seawall, the mayor says.

Cecil Clarke said he's "more than prepared" to fight.

"It's a stonewall of debate now between bureaucracies of who's responsible, so we have to go to a political solution now, and I believe the province and the feds will do the right thing if we approach it properly," he said.

The federal government built the seawall in the 1940s. The wooden structure was repaired in the 1980s, but it has been damaged by a number of storms since then.

Residents worry that it could collapse in the next big storm, leaving the community flooded.

Clarke said it's an urgent matter given the time of year.

Earlier this year, the Department of Natural Resources released a report stating that the repair or replacement of the seawall is an urgent situation.

Neither the federal government nor the Nova Scotia government has agreed to fix or replace it.

The federal government turned down a request for funding, claiming the seawall is not a federal responsibility because it's on provincial land.

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality has committed $100,000 to repairing the seawall.