Hampton Roads to get more than $120M to combat future flooding
More than four years after Hurricane Irene walloped Hampton Roads, the region is getting a huge pool of money to try to prevent even worse disasters caused by rising seas.
Virginia was awarded more than $120 million Thursday afternoon as part of a federal contest, the National Disaster Resilience Competition.
The money was announced by Julian Castro, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
During the announcement at the Grandy Village Learning Center, steps from the Elizabeth River, Castro praised Virginia’s plan as “truly innovative.” Gov. Terry McAuliffe smiled broadly, bragging that Virginia got more money than the seven other winning states. (New York City and New Orleans got more than Virginia, however.)
Most of the money will be spent in Norfolk, and mayor Paul Fraim drew laughs when he said he wanted to “thank the governor in advance for sending almost all of that money ” to his city.
HUD awarded money for two of three major projects proposed in the city.
Plans in the Ohio Creek watershed include elevating portions of two roads, Kimball Terrace and Westminster Avenue, improving marshes to capture stormwater in Chesterfield Heights and creating new berms, walls and an underground detention area.
Meanwhile, a “coastal resilience accelerator” will attempt to spur business innovation. Its exact location hasn’t been determined, but plans call for it to be in Norfolk.
Virginia’s application sought $493 million, more than four times as much as it was awarded, so many other proposed projects won’t be funded – at least for now.
Plans for the Newton’s Creek watershed in Norfolk, including improvements in the Harbor Park and St. Paul’s areas, didn’t make the cut. Nor did any proposals from Newport News and Chesapeake
, where plans included elevating Bainbridge Boulevard and a voluntary home buyout program to allow some residents to move to safer areas. In Newport News, they included stabilizing the Chesapeake Avenue seawall, stream restoration along Salters Creek and a new drainage channel, gate and pump station.
A commission created by former Gov. Tim Kaine found that climate change was leading to more frequent and more severe storms. Meanwhile, the land in Hampton Roads is slowly sinking, or “subsiding,” relative to sea level.
Combine the two trends and, as Virginia wrote in its application, the region is “second only to New Orleans as the largest population at risk from” sea level rise.
And even if Hampton Roads could retreat from the sea, it wouldn’t want to. The water that threatens its future is also its lifeblood, with the Navy and the Port of Virginia the largest economic engines.
Thus the focus on “resilience,” which federal officials define as being able to reduce the chance of future disasters – and knowing how to recover if they happen.
Virginia got more than a 10th of a national pool of about $1 billion, $181 million of which was set aside for New Jersey and New York because of superstorm Sandy’s impact.
Others given money Thursday include Minot, N.D.; Shelby County, Tenn.; and the states of California, Tennessee and Louisiana.
Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, supported the push for the money, as did Reps. Bobby Scott, a Democrat, and Scott Rigell, a Republican.
Norfolk’s chief resilience officer, Christine Morris, who has been coordinating the city’s efforts, said the money announced Thursday will help move the region toward a new approach.
Too often, she said, people living near water have tried to keep it away rather than finding a way to live with it. The new vision includes re-establishing historic waterways that have been developed over and creating new green spaces to collect water during storms.
“We’re going to be greener; we’re going to be bluer,” Morris said. “We’ve got to give a little space for that water to run, because it’s going to run.”
