Can Virginia's Wetlands Regulations Deal With Climate Change? Much Work Is Needed.

Tidal Wetlands @ Bethel Beach, Mathews County, VA

Snapshot: In 2020, Virginia’s General Assembly told Virginia’s Marine Resources Commission to develop standards and guidelines to include sea level rise in the regulation of Virginia’s tidal wetlands. This comes as the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is trying to do the same with protection of shoreline buffers, behind the wetlands, in the face of climate change impacts. The new draft guidelines for tidal wetlands are out and they, like the shoreline buffer draft regulations, fail to fully account for sea level rise in wetlands regulatory decisions.

(this post was originally made on March 7, 2021)

Backstory: Wetlands Watch began its work on sea level rise adaptation 14 years ago with a letter we sent to then-Governor Kaine, warning that sea level rise would eliminate at least half of the state’s vegetated tidal wetlands. The urgency for action has only accelerated since then, and our old estimates of sea level rise pointing to a 50% loss of vegetated tidal wetlands would now happen in the next 30 - 40 years!

As with the regulatory changes proposed to address climate change in the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act (CBPA), Virginia is one of the first (the first?) states to try to put climate change and sea level rise into existing shoreline regulatory programs. To meet this challenge, Virginia must take its time, convene experts in science, law, and economics, hold numerous stakeholder meetings to insure public input and buy-in, and then issue the draft regulations for extensive public comment - a process that would take a year or more to do right.

This thorough approach is even more essential given that our tidal wetlands guidelines have not been updated in 28 years! (around the time of President Clinton’s first inaugural and Beck’s release of “Loser” ). Who knows when Virginia will get back around to looking at this issue. Even waiting another 10 years will be too late. Rising seas will start taking out some coastal wetlands as landowners get permits to erect walls against the floods, dooming much of the rest of the shoreline’s wetlands.

This illustrates the challenge faced as wetlands deal with sea level rise by trying to move “uphill.” We need to coordinate the two shoreline regulatory statues, the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act and the tidal wetlands regulations. This is NOT being done in Virginia’s regulatory changes.

This illustrates the shift in regulatory coverage that must occur: today’s shoreline buffers become tomorrow’s tidal wetlands and the regulatory system must move “uphill” with the intertidal zone. This is NOT being done in Virginia’s regulatory changes.

Virginia is NOT going about this in the right way, by taking time to understand the difficulty of putting climate change into shoreline regulations. With our four-year, one-term governorship there is not time for a full regulatory review on the new tidal wetlands guidelines out before Governor Northam leaves office. The draft VMRC guidelines were assembled over a few months, by staff acting without the usual scientific advisory group, and being forced to hold webinars for stakeholder involvement. The draft guidelines developed are only being allowed a 30-day comment period before they are put to the Virginia Marine Resources Committee for approval, forcing stakeholders in Virginia to make this regulatory review a priority.

The guidelines are not being well coordinated with the re-write of the CBPA regulations taking place at DEQ on a different timeline. Given that the only way to insure the survival of our tidal wetlands is to allow them to migrate landward, this coordinated approach is essential.

Take Action: You can keep abreast of the changes being proposed on our “Virginia Policy Updates” webpage. You can comment on the proposed tidal wetlands guidelines at: https://mrc.virginia.gov/Notices/2021/PN_Draft-Wetlands-Guidelines_03-01-2021.shtm