Virginia’s Proactive Plan to Tackle Coastal Resilience | Article

Virginia, like all coastal states, is threatened by sea level rise, nuisance flooding, shoreline erosion, storm events, and other intensifying climate change impacts. The state’s shoreline spans over 7,000 miles, and its riverine coastal region is home to over 70 percent of its population, critical military and industrial infrastructure, unique ecosystems, Indigenous communities, and several historical sites of national importance.

Virginia has a lot at stake when it comes to its coasts, and state policymakers must act quickly to prevent catastrophic losses. In this vein, in October 2020, Governor Ralph Northam’s administration released the Virginia Coastal Resilience Master Planning Framework, a comprehensive approach to coastal planning and adaptation that represents an unprecedented development in the state’s efforts to address the impacts of climate change.

The document is the product of a two-year process following Governor Northam’s 2018 Executive Order 24 (EO-24), a directive to build statewide resilience to sea level rise and natural hazards. The Framework is grounded in four main goals: to identify and prioritize resilience projects, to find funding sources, to incorporate more accurate climate modeling into state plans, and to coordinate between multiple levels of governance. Once the final Master Plan is in place, implementation will be led by the Commonwealth’s Chief Resilience Officer, Matthew Strickler, and the Special Assistant to the Governor for Coastal Adaptation and Protection (SACAP), Ann Phillips. The planning process is supported by a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), an interdisciplinary roster of experts appointed by the Governor, which will work with the chief resilience officer and special assistant to administer the Master Plan and track its progress over time.

“We have people from all different areas—academia, state agencies, nonprofits—that are going to be serving on this TAC and providing expertise to the administration as they pull this Plan together,” said Elizabeth Andrews, TAC member and Director of William & Mary Law School’s Virginia Coastal Policy Center.

As reflected in the Planning Framework, Virginia’s approach to coastal resilience is informed by cutting-edge climate research and modeling, such as the Coastal Virginia Sea Level Rise and Recurrent Flooding Predictive Inundation Model. The model visualizes the impacts of sea level rise at the regional and local levels, using the most recent available data to support flood preparedness and mitigation efforts.

The framework considers all the challenges facing the state’s coastal region. For example, land subsidence is accelerating the effects of climate-driven sea level rise. Precipitation events are also intensifying across the Southeast United States, leading to increased storm surge and nuisance flooding.

Political, demographic, and economic differences across Virginia’s coast further complicate the problem of shoreline resilience. For the purpose of the Planning Framework, the state is divided into four master planning regions, which vary in development intensity, geography, and shoreline type, and will require tailored solutions to climate challenges.

The Planning Framework highlights the particular vulnerabilities of each region as well as key actions specific to their coastal challenges. Andrews has led the development and implementation of the Resilience Adaptation Feasibility Tool (RAFT) to equip localities with the knowledge and resources necessary to prioritize coastal resilience projects at the community level.

"One of the goals [of the Planning Framework] is to have all the coastal localities go through the RAFT process, because it not only ends up with a list of projects to work on, but it really jumpstarts that resilience discussion at the community level,” adds Andrews.

Much of the state’s population is endangered by coastal hazards and climate change impacts. Marginalized communities—including poor, elderly, and minority communities—are likely to bear disproportionate impacts.

“Virginia has those marginalized communities in a wide variety of different settings and in each one of the regions,” said Rob Young, Director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. Young noted that the state’s Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, Dr. Janice Underwood, is involved in the planning process to ensure it addresses the needs and concerns of marginalized communities.

The Planning Framework makes efforts to include Virginia’s diverse communities, Andrews noted, “Whether it’s our inner-city communities that are in subsidized housing that’s not resilient [and] that’s flooding, or it’s our rural communities that have septic systems that are going to be failing.”

While the Planning Framework identifies a path toward building coastal resilience, the document also lays out the challenges of its own implementation, namely that many of the resilience efforts underway at local and regional levels are largely uncoordinated and underfunded.

Issues with coordination are addressed in the Planning Framework through the creation of the TAC and new resilience planning roundtable discussions at the local level.

The Planning Framework also lists several financing mechanisms for the Master Plan. Among these are National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funds, as well as the Community Flood Preparedness Fund (CFPF), a state-level program to finance coastal and inland flood protection. At least 25 percent of CFPF funds must support efforts in low-income communities.

In 2020, the General Assembly paved the way for the Commonwealth to enter the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which will deposit about $45 million of auction funds annually into the CFPF as well as provide a host of additional funding opportunities for research and flood protection projects.

CFPF funds will be crucial to safeguarding the continuity of Governor Northam’s coastal resilience plans beyond his term.

“It is important to institutionalize the effort as much as possible to make sure that we do not lose our progress on this,” Andrews said. Andrews further emphasized the importance of the legal stipulation that auction proceeds from the RGGI be directed into the CFPF.

Local loan programs, municipal revenue, and innovative bond proposals are additional options to sponsor the Master Plan, which will require creative financing solutions. As the Planning Framework emphasizes, the economic hurdles of funding coastal resilience efforts are overshadowed by the potentially catastrophic costs of inaction.

The problem of climate-driven sea level rise is not unique to Virginia. Coastal states across the country are grappling with a host of similar issues. As an early initiative, Virginia’s Master Plan will likely serve to catalyze proactive planning for coastal resilience across the nation.

“What the Commonwealth of Virginia is trying to do is groundbreaking and will certainly create a paradigm that other states could choose to emulate,” said Young. “I definitely think that the state is playing a leadership role… and is uniquely positioned to do something good and to make a difference.”

Author: Hamzah Jhaveri