FEATURES – September/October 2008

A Sea of Change

How does Hampton Roads plan to adapt to unavoidable environmental issues that could put much of our area under water?

By Jessica Carlson

Imagine the year 2108-Meyera Oberndorf is serving yet another term as mayor of Virginia Beach ... the General Assembly finally agrees on a way to fund transportation ... and construction resumes (again) on Norfolk's Granby Tower.

Now here are a few things you can expect with a bit more certainty-the sea level will be at least 2 feet higher than it is today. Flooding will be a constant reality. Beach replenishment will be an expensive, ongoing and impossible undertaking. Strong storms will cause as much flooding as Hurricane Isabel, nearly every time they hit.

This is not a doomsday scenario. In fact, a 2-foot rise in sea level is a modest projection compared to other worst-case circumstances that would put much of Hampton Roads completely under water. But if there is one thing most politicians and scientists agree on, it's this-the debate on climate change is over.

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in its 2007 assessment report that "warming of the climate is unequivocal" and concluded with more than 90 percent certainty that "the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming."

Gov. Tim Kaine agrees. During the first meeting of the commonwealth's newly formed Commission on Climate Change, Kaine addressed the panel. "Gone are the days of debating whether man-made effects exist," he said.

CLIMATE CHANGE IN VIRGINIA

While skeptics remain, the statewide climate change debate has slowly moved from whether or not it exists to what the likely results will be.

Globally, the IPCC projects the Earth to warm between 3.2 and 7.2. degrees Fahrenheit in the next century, which it says will affect regions of the planet in varying ways. Some of the major consequences of this change in temperature include rising sea levels, increased precipitation, disrupted eco-systems, the melting of polar regions and more severe storms.

In Hampton Roads, a low-lying region surrounded by water, rising sea level is undoubtedly the most consequential effect of climate change. While the IPCC estimates the global average sea level will rise between .6 and 2 feet in the next 100 years, the Mid-Atlantic region is considered to be at even greater risk because the land here is actually sinking, or subsiding.

The National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) has tide gages at Sewell's Point in Norfolk that show a 1.45 foot rise in sea levels since 1927, while averages for other regional gages vary. "Our data has shown that sea levels have risen about a foot in the last century," says Paula Jasinski, Virginia program manager for the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office. "And in the last 20 to 25 years, it has increased in pace."

Using historical data and factoring in temperature increases and land subsidence, most reports project at least a 2-foot rise for the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads region in the next 100 years, no matter what is done to mitigate climate change.

At the forefront of the issue of sea level rise in Hampton Roads is Skip Stiles, the executive director of Wetlands Watch, a Norfolk-based non-profit dedicated to protecting and conserving wetlands. In the spring of 2007, his organization issued a report using existing scientific data that predicted that 50 to 80 percent of Virginia's coastal wetlands would be lost come 2107 due to rising sea levels.

"We looked at tide gages from the Mexican border to New England to see what areas were sinking and rising, and when we looked at it, we were surprised because Hampton Roads was the largest population center at greatest risk for sea level rise, outside of New Orleans," Skip says. "We got concerned because around here, the wetlands of course are at risk, but also, the landscape, the communities. So we wrote to the governor and said, 'Hey, you've got to do something.'"

In his letter to Gov. Kaine, Stiles pointed to the commonwealth's lack of planning and research, as compared to neighboring states. "In the Mid-Atlantic, some states are in the process of initial analysis, some are conducting detailed mapping of coastal areas and running inundation models, and some have advanced to initial deliberations on a response and mitigation strategy," he wrote. "Virginia is currently the only state in the Mid-Atlantic region without a visible state reaction to the issue of sea level rise and its impacts on coastal ecosystems."

A few months later, Gov. Kaine released the Virginia Energy Plan, which set a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2025. In December 2007, Kaine established the Governor's Commission on Climate Change to address additional steps needed to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.

Stiles was appointed to the commission. "It was sort of like, 'Hey if you're so smart, fix this,'" he says.

For the full version of this article, see the September issue of Hampton Roads Magazine-available wherever magazines are sold.

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