Grant Expands Virginia’s Living Shoreline Partnership

Living Shoreline in Ingleside Neighborhood in Norfolk - Madison Teeter

Snapshot: Many organizations in Virginia have been working to expand the use of living shorelines as the means to control shoreline erosion. That work just got a boost with a three-year grant to form a network of these organizations and train contractors, educate local governments, and share knowledge.

Backstory: Living Shorelines are nature-based solutions to shoreline erosion that, unlike bulkheads or rip-rap, expand habitat and improve water quality. They’re so good at what they do that Virginia just enacted legislation to make Living Shorelines the default approach to controlling shoreline degradation and made them a major implementation goal to meet our Chesapeake Bay water quality goals by 2025. However, there is a lot of work to be done before they spread along Virginia’s shorelines.

We need to train more contractors (a resilience workforce), install demonstration living shorelines, market their performance and benefits, and link together all the people working to expand Living Shorelines across the state to share resources and experience.  To address this need in the lower James River, Wetlands Watch in 2019 joined forces with several partners* on a James River Association National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) resilience grant to form the Living Shoreline Collaborative (LSC).  The LSC presented living shoreline workshops for Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professionals (CBLPs), local government staff, and shoreline contractors, and held a Living Shoreline Summit. The LSC is currently in the process of installing three living shoreline demonstration projects in Prince George, Isle of Wight, and Smithfield, and two green infrastructure projects in the City of Hampton, planning another annual summit and on October 21st at 5:30pm, and hosting a James River Watershed property owner webinar.

Now the LSC is expanding statewide and adding partners, thanks to a $1 million NFWF grant to the James River Association. Over the next three years, the LSC will expand this collective effort to include partners from various sectors including nonprofits, academia, local governments, and shoreline professionals. Partners in the expanded LSC will include the James River Association, Wetlands Watch and CBLP, the Elizabeth River Project, VIMS CCRM, Colonial Soil and Water Conservation District, DCR SEAS, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Dialogue + Design – as well as many organizations outside of the James River Watershed.

The goal of this effort is to install more attractive and functional living shorelines and train more contractors in design, installation and maintenance. As well, the effort will bring local government decision-makers to living shoreline sites to educate them. Finally, there will be a significant effort to organize a larger Collaborative with more partners and hold annual living shoreline forums where stakeholders can network and share best practices. At the end of this grant we hope to have a solid network of organizations and trained practitioners working in Virginia’s coastal plain to expand the use of living shorelines.

* Partners include: City of Hampton, Friends of the Rappahannock (FOR), Virginia Institute of Marine Science Center for Coastal Resource Management (VIMS CCRM), Virginia Department of Conservation Resources Shoreline Evaluation Advisory Service (DCR SEAS), Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Oyster Shell Recycling Program and Bay Environmental)