The crisis of rising sea levels

Waters Edge

A Reuters Investigation
As the seas rise, a slow-motion disaster gnaws at Americas
shores

By Ryan McNeill, Deborah J. Nelson and Duff Wilson
Filed Sept. 4, 2014, 1 p.m. GMT
Part 1: A Reuters analysis finds that flooding is increasing along much of the nations coastline, forcing
many communities into costly, controversial struggles with a relentless foe.
WALLOPS ISLAND, Virginia Missions flown from the NASA base here have documented some of the
most dramatic evidence of a warming planet over the past 20 years: the melting of polar ice, a force
contributing to a global rise in ocean levels.
The Wallops Flight Facilitys relationship with rising seas doesnt end there. Its billion-dollar space launch
complex occupies a barrier island that's drowning under the impact of worsening storms and flooding.
NASA's response? Rather than move out of harms way, officials have added more than $100 million in
new structures over the past five years and spent $43 million more to fortify the shoreline with sand. Nearly
a third of that new sand has since been washed away.
Across a narrow inlet to the north sits the island town of Chincoteague, gateway to a national wildlife
refuge blessed with a stunning mile-long recreational beach a major tourist draw and source of big
business for the community. But the sea is robbing the townspeople of their main asset.
The beach has been disappearing at an average rate of 10 to 22 feet (3 to 7 meters) a year. The access road
and a 1,000-car parking lot have been rebuilt five times in the past decade because of coastal flooding, at a
total cost of $3 million.
Officials of the wildlife refuge say they face a losing battle against rising seas. In 2010, they proposed to
close the beach and shuttle tourists by bus to a safer stretch of sandy shoreline.
The town revolted. Like many local residents, Wanda Thornton, the towns representative on the
Accomack County board of supervisors, accepts that the sea is rising, but is skeptical that climate change
and its effects have anything to do with the erosion of the beach. As a result, Im just not convinced that it
requires the drastic change that some people think it does, she said.
Four years on, after a series of angry public meetings, the sea keeps eating the shore, and the government
keeps spending to fix the damage.
Wallops officials and the people of Chincoteague are united at the waters edge in a battle against rising
seas.

All along the ragged shore of Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic coast of the Delmarva Peninsula, north into
New England and south into Florida, along the Gulf Coast and parts of the West Coast, people, businesses
and governments are confronting rising seas not as a future possibility. For them, the oceans rise is a
troubling everyday reality.
This is the first in a series of articles examining the phenomenon of rising seas, its effects on the United
States, and the countrys response to an increasingly watery world. Other stories will show how other
nations are coping.
In cities like Norfolk, Virginia, and Annapolis, Maryland, coastal flooding has become more frequent.
Beyond the cities, seawater and tidal marsh have consumed farmland and several once-inhabited islands.
Here in Accomack County alone, encroaching seawater is converting an estimated 50 acres (20 hectares) of
farmland into wetlands each year, according to a 2009 Environmental Protection Agency study.
It breaks my heart to think about it, said Grayson Chesser, a decoy carver whose ancestors arrived in the
Chesapeake Bay area four centuries ago. He lives outside Saxis, a town thats losing ground to the water.
Some nearby villages have disappeared altogether. Youve got to deal with the fact that its happening
and what are you going to do with those of us on the edge?
Its a question the U.S. government is dodging. More than 300 counties claim a piece of more than 86,000
miles (138,000 km) of tidal coastline in the United States, yet no clear national policy determines which
locations receive help to protect their shorelines. That has left communities fighting for attention and
resources, lest they be abandoned to the sea, as is playing out in Chincoteague.
If we cant make a decision about rising sea level in a parking lot, were in trouble as a nation, said Louis
Hinds, former manager of Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.
Tidal waters worldwide have climbed an average of 8 inches (20 cm) over the past century, according to
the 2014 National Climate Assessment. The two main causes are the volume of water added to oceans from
glacial melt and the expansion of that water from rising sea temperatures.
In many places, including much of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, an additional factor makes the problem
worse: The land is sinking. This process, known as subsidence, is due in part to inexorable geological
shifts. But another major cause is the extraction of water from underground reservoirs for industrial and
public water supplies. As aquifers are drained, the land above them drops, a process that can be slowed by
reducing withdrawals.
WATER EVERYWHERE (from left): Seepage of seawater into coastal marshes is believed to cause ghost
forests like these on Assateague Island, Virginia. Nuisance flooding inundated the historic City Dock in
downtown Annapolis, Maryland, several times this spring. NASA has had to invest tens of millions of
dollars into seawalls and replenished beaches to protect launch pads and other infrastructure at its Wallops
Flight Facility in Virginia. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque; Mary F. Calvert; Kevin Lamarque
Youve got to deal with the fact that its happening and what are you going to do with those of us on the
edge?
Grayson Chesser, lifelong resident, Accomack County, Virginia
For this article, Reuters analyzed millions of data entries and spent months reporting from affected
communities to show that, while government at all levels remains largely unable or unwilling to address the
issue, coastal flooding on much of the densely populated Eastern Seaboard has surged in recent years as sea
levels have risen.
These findings, first reported July 10, arent derived from computer simulations like those used to model
future climate patterns, which have been attacked as unreliable by skeptics of climate change research. The
analysis is built on a time-tested measuring technology tide gauges that has been used for more than a
century to help guide seafarers into port.
Reuters gathered more than 25 million hourly readings from National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration tide gauges at nearly 70 sites on the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts and compared them to
flood thresholds documented by the National Weather Service.
The analysis was then narrowed to include only the 25 gauges with data spanning at least five decades. It
showed that during that period, the average number of days a year that tidal waters reached or exceeded
flood thresholds increased at all but two sites and tripled at more than half of the locations.

ABOUT THE

ANALYSIS
When Reuters set out to measure the frequency of flooding along the U.S. coastline, it turned to one of the
nations longest-running sentinels of the changing oceans: tide gauges.
These devices, originally deployed to assist navigation by mariners, are critical to understanding the
interaction between land and sea. The gauges measure the level of the surface of the sea, relative to a fixed
point on land.
Some gauges have been in operation for a century or more, providing a long-term view of sea levels
unavailable from satellites. A gauge in San Francisco, installed in 1854, provides the Western
Hemispheres longest-running continuous record of sea levels.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operates more than 200 tide gauges on the U.S.
coast and the shores of the Great Lakes. Most of the data is online and available to the public through
multiple portals operated by NOAA. The gauges give a very unbiased view of whats going on along the
coast, said William Sweet, a NOAA oceanographer.
At nearly 70 of those gauges, National Weather Service forecasters have published thresholds for when
flooding can begin. Reuters downloaded more than 25 million hourly readings from those gauges and
compared them to the flood thresholds.
Reuters then determined how many days in each meteorological year had at least one hour when the sea
level equaled or exceeded the flood threshold. A meteorological year, from May 1 through April 30, is used
so the winter season is not split.
If a gauge did not have data from at least 292 days in a year, or 80 percent of the days in a typical year, the
results were ignored.
For the purposes of measuring changes over multiple decades, the analysis then focused on the 25 gauges
with data spanning five decades. The average annual flood-level days were then calculated for two periods:
pre-1971 and 2001-present. Gauges had to have at least five years of results in a time period to be included.
The methodology was adapted from those used by researchers at NOAA and Old Dominion University in
Norfolk, Virginia. Reporters sought their input on how to analyze the data and how to present the findings.

Since 2001, water has reached flood levels an average of 20 days or more a year in Annapolis, Maryland;
Wilmington, North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Sandy Hook, New Jersey; and
Charleston, South Carolina. Before 1971, none of these locations averaged more than five days a year.
Annapolis had the highest average number of days a year above flood threshold since 2001, at 34. On the
Delmarva Peninsula, the annual average tripled to 18 days at the Lewes, Delaware, tide gauge.
The flood threshold does not measure actual flooding. It indicates the level at which the first signs of
flooding are likely to appear ponding on pavements and such. The higher the reading, the higher the
probability of closed roads, damaged property and overwhelmed drainage systems. Scientists consider the
readings to be a reliable indicator of actual flooding.
The Reuters analysis shows that the impacts of climate change-related sea level rise are increasing
frequencies of minor coastal flooding, said William Sweet, an oceanographer for NOAA who led a team
of scientists that released similar findings in late July. The NOAA study examined 45 gauges and found
that flooding is increasing in frequency along much of the U.S. coastline and that the rate of increase is
accelerating at sites along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.
The coastal flooding is often minor. Its cumulative consequences are not. As flooding increases in both
height and frequency, it exacts a toll in closed businesses, repeated repairs, and investment in protection. In
effect, higher seas make the same level of storm and even the same high tides more damaging than they
used to be.
In Charleston, a six-lane highway floods when high tides prevent storm water from draining into the
Atlantic, making it difficult for half the towns 120,000 residents to get to three hospitals and police
headquarters. The city has more than $200 million in flood-control projects under way.
In Annapolis, home to the U.S. Naval Academy, half a foot of water flooded the colonial district, a
National Historic Landmark, at high tide on Chesapeake Bay during rainstorms on April 30, May 1, May
16 and Aug. 12. Shopkeepers blocked doorways with wood boards and trash cans; people slipped off shoes
to wade to work in bare feet.
Tropical storm flooding has worsened, too, because the water starts rising from a higher platform, a recent
study found.
When Tropical Storm Nicole struck Maryland in 2010, it was no stronger than storms in 1928 and 1951
that were non-events, said the studys author, David Kriebel, a Naval Academy ocean and coastal
engineer. Nicole, by contrast, swamped downtown Annapolis and the Naval Academy. Its partly due to
ground subsidence, Kriebel said. Meanwhile, theres been a worldwide rise in sea level over that period.
In tidal Virginia, where the tide gauge with the fastest rate of sea level rise on the Atlantic Coast is located,
a heavy rainfall at high tide increasingly floods roads and strands drivers in Norfolk, Portsmouth and
Virginia Beach.
Coastal flooding already has shut down Norfolks $318 million light rail system several times since it
opened in 2011. Mayor Paul Fraim said he needs $1 billion for flood gates, higher roads and better drains to
protect the citys heavily developed shoreline.
LEGACY OF INACTION
The nations capital isnt immune. The Potomac River turns into a tidal estuary just north of Washington as
it flows toward Chesapeake Bay to the south. The average number of days a year above flood threshold has
risen to 25 since 2001, up from five before 1971.
In 2010, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began a $4.1 million project to close gaps in the line of flood
protection for Constitution Avenue and the Federal Triangle area home of the departments of Justice and
Commerce, the National Archives and the Internal Revenue Service. The corps expects to finish in late
autumn a 380-foot-long, 9-foot-tall barrier across 17th Street near the Washington Monument.
It still needs to raise by up to 3.5 feet a massive earthen berm built in the 1930s on the north side of the
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. But Congress high and dry on Capitol Hill hasnt approved the $7.1
million needed to finish that and two smaller projects.
A Reuters analysis of more than 25 million hourly readings from nearly 70 tide gauges around the United
States shows that at most locations, the mean sea level has risen steadily in recent decades. Flooding has
increased, too, as measured by the number of days a year that readings exceeded flood thresholds set by the
National Weather Service at the 25 gauges with data spanning five decades or more.
Annapolis
Maryland

Since 1929, the annual mean sea level has changed about: 13.03 inches
Since 1928, the number of flood-level days this gauge has recorded is at least: 926
NOAA has calculated that this gauge has a long-term annual rising trend of: 0.14 inches

; analysis of flooding days excludes years where data was available for fewer than 292 days.
The Army Corps of Engineers, the agency charged with reducing flood and storm damage on the nations
coasts and inland waterways, recommended the project in 1992. Congress authorized it in 1999. Weve
been waiting for appropriations for a long time, said Jim Ludlam, the corps civil engineer on the National
Mall project.
Congress chooses which corps projects to fund on a piecemeal basis. It has $60 billion in approved but
unfunded projects gathering dust on its shelves, including 34 authorized by lawmakers this spring. The
sums involved dwarf the $2 billion a year the corps typically receives for construction, aside from disaster
funding.
As a result, we will be constructing water projects to solve past problems for the next 40 years as the
money is slowly made available, said David Conrad, a water resources policy specialist in Washington.
The wait list is symptomatic of a larger problem hindering efforts to deal with rising seas: the U.S.
governments inability to confront the issue head-on.
Engineers say there are three possible responses to rising waters: undertake coastal defense projects; adapt
with actions like raising roads and buildings; or abandon land to the sea. Lacking a national strategy, the
United States applies these measures haphazardly.
Sea level rise has become mired in the debate over climate change. And on climate change, the politically
polarized U.S. Congress cant even agree whether its happening.
The stalemate was on display in May, when the administration of President Barack Obama released its
updated National Climate Assessment. The 841-page report was five years in the making, with input from
more than 300 scientists, engineers, government and industry officials and other experts, a 60-member
advisory committee and more than a dozen federal departments and agencies. It was among the first major
assessments of climate change to move from predictions of disaster to point out the effects that can already
be seen: record-setting heat waves, droughts and torrential rains.
At or near the top of the list of the most pressing concerns is the issue of sea level rise along the vast
coastlines of the United States, Jerry Melillo, a scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods
Hole, Massachusetts, and chairman of the advisory committee, said at a briefing on the report.

SURROUNDED: From centuries-old fishing communities on Chesapeake Bay to a NASA space center on
the Atlantic coast, a Virginia county bears the brunt of rising seas. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Within hours of its release, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, Republican chairman of the House
science committee, decried the report as nothing more than a political document intended to frighten
Americans into believing that any abnormal weather we experience is the direct result of human [carbon
dioxide] emissions.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, responded: There is no time left to deny
the reality of climate change, or to turn a blind eye on the impact it is having on our country.
Congress actually recognized global warming way back in 1978 with passage of the National Climate
Program Act. The law aimed to assist the Nation and the world to understand and respond to natural and
man-induced climate processes and their implications.
But after three decades and more than $47 billion in direct federal spending on climate change research,
Congress hasnt passed a major piece of legislation to deal specifically with the effects of rising sea levels.
In the U.S., you have best data set on whats happening in the world, and yet its not used in public
policy, said Robert Nicholls, professor of coastal engineering at the University of Southampton in England
and a contributor to the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "You say you dont
believe in global warming. But sea levels have been rising for 100 years in Baltimore.
ROCKET SCIENCE
The irony is evident at Wallops Flight Facility.
NASA scientist William Krabill and his team have flown research missions from there aboard aircraft with
laser technology to measure changes in the Greenland ice sheet, 1,000 miles long, 400 miles wide and up to
2 miles thick. The data they have collected since 1991 has produced evidence that the ice covering
Greenland is melting. Any glacier we have visited in Greenland over the last 25 years is thinning, Krabill
said. Its thinning faster five years ago than when we visited 25 years ago.
Wet spots
U.S. tide gauges have recorded at least 12,000 days since Jan. 1, 1920, when water levels reached or
exceeded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration flooding thresholds. The interactive graphic
below shows when and where each of those days occurred.
3.44floods per stationin 1961.
1920201305001000 floods
gauges
1961June
Source: Reuters analysis of NOAA tide gauge data.
Theyve found the same thing is happening to Antarcticas ice sheet seven times larger than Greenlands.
Their discoveries underpin predictions of rising seas for decades to come.
The scientists dont have to look far to see the consequences of rising seas. Wallops Island is gradually
being inundated. Yet this bastion of climate research has been slow to apply the science of sea level rise to
its own operations. Officials here are embarking on expansion in the face of increasing assaults from the
sea.
The Arctic research programs aircraft is safely ensconced in a hangar on the mainland. But a billion
dollars in assets 50 NASA structures including three sub-orbital spacecraft launchers, as well as a
commercial spaceport and a Navy surface combat training center cluster on Wallops Island.
The launch pads sit at the south end of the island, the most vulnerable part, said Caroline Massey,
assistant director of management operations at Wallops. Moving them farther north would put them too
dangerously close to the people of Chincoteague, she said.
But Wallops Island has been losing an average of 12 feet of shoreline a year. A seawall three miles long
and 14 feet high intended to protect the launch structures hasnt stopped the flooding. Rather, it has allowed
wave action to consume the natural beach that once served as a shoreline buffer.
CLOSE TO HOME: NASA scientist William Krabill has used Wallops Flight Facility to conduct research
on the climate phenomena that are contributing to the inundation of nearby Wallops Island.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
In January 2009, a federal interagency assessment of the mid-Atlantic coast said that both Wallops and
nearby Assateague islands may have crossed a geomorphic threshold from a relatively stable state into a
highly unstable condition one in which rising seas could trigger significant and irreversible changes.
The islands could shrink, move or break apart.
Ten months later, construction started on a $15.5 million rocket assembly building and a $100 million
launch pad 250 feet from the pounding surf on the south end of the island.
In early 2010, Wallops officials proposed a $43 million project to extend the sea wall by about 1,400 feet
and build a new, 4-mile-long beach to better protect their growing assets on the island. As required by law,
they released a draft environmental impact statement on the plan.
Reviewers from state and federal agencies criticized the 348-page document for failing to adequately take
rising sea levels into account in the project design and impact, or to temper future plans for expansion.
Even NASAs own technical review team noted the short shrift given to the problem.
Wallops officials responded by nearly doubling references to the effects of sea level rise in the impact
statement. But in the official record of the decision, which announced Wallops would proceed with the
project, sea level rise isnt mentioned anywhere. Joshua Bundick, Wallopss environmental planning
manager, explained that he distilled the issues down to only the highest points, and sea level rise wasnt
among them.
Before work began, Hurricane Irene hit in August 2011. The storm surge did $3.8 million in damage to
Wallops and closed it for weeks, Massey said. Work was finally finished in August 2012. Two months
later, Sandy ripped out large hunks of the wall, sparing the buildings but washing away a quarter of the 3.2
million cubic yards of new beach sand. An additional 10 percent has eroded away since then, Massey said.
An $11 million redo, paid out of the Sandy relief fund, began in July, and Wallops officials are considering
adding another launch pad, she said.
In the U.S., you have best data set on whats happening in the world, and yet its not used in public
policy.
Robert Nicholls, professor of coastal engineering, University of Southampton, England
As NASA stays the course at Wallops, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service is sending a different message
to the town of Chincoteague next door.
The island community of 3,000 attracts more than a million tourists a year.
The big draw is Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on Assateague Island, just east of Chincoteague.
Its 14,000 acres of wild beach, wetlands and loblolly pine forest provide habitats for the endangered
Delmarva fox squirrel; the piping plover, a threatened beach-nesting bird; and up to 150 Chincoteague
ponies, feral animals descended from a herd brought to the island in colonial times.
Most visitors come for the mile of ocean-facing public recreational beach, according to the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge. Visitors can drive with all of their gear right up to the edge of
the beach to park in a 1,000-space crushed-shell lot.
The only way to get to the beach is to drive through town, and many visitors eat, shop and sleep there.
Tourism accounts for about two-thirds of the jobs in town, state and federal records show.
The problem is that the beach has been retreating at an average rate of 10 to 22 feet a year amid bigger and
more frequent storms. The cost to American taxpayers of repeated destruction of the parking lot and
causeway from rising sea levels would only increase, Fish and Wildlife officials said.
In 2010, the agency came up with a proposal: close the existing recreational beach and relocate it a mile
and a half north, where the shoreline was retreating at a third of the pace. The new site would have a
smaller parking lot to limit disturbance to wildlife, and visitors would be shuttled from a satellite lot in
town.
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WET SEASON: Annapolis officials say street flooding at high tide or during rainstorms has become more
common in recent years - an observation backed by Reuters tide-gauge analsysis. REUTERS/Mary F.
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Its incumbent on us to look further down the road, said Hinds, the refuge manager at the time.
Chincoteague was incensed. Town leaders pointed to a survey in which 80 percent of visitors said they
would not continue coming to the beach if they had to park in town and take a shuttle.
Residents also feared that Fish and Wildlife would let the southern end of Assateague Island erode away if
the beach were moved. The southern tip of the island shelters a nascent shellfish aquaculture industry and
buffers Chincoteague from storm surges.
A series of angry meetings with local Fish and Wildlife officials resolved nothing.
In 2012, Chincoteague got a hearing on the proposal at the U.S. Capitol. Thornton, the county supervisor,
testified that local residents feared for their jobs. In a recent interview, Thornton, who owns a campground
in Chincoteague, said she thinks the federal government is using climate change as a ploy in a long-term
plan to get everyone away from the coastline.
She blames the government, not rising sea levels, for the beachs flooding problems. The refuge hasnt
taken steps to protect the shoreline, such as replenishing the beach with sand, she said. Theres going to be
nothing left to protect us, she said.
The agency compromised somewhat, releasing an official draft plan in May that would relocate the beach
to the less unstable site, but keep the parking area at its current size, as long as theres enough land to do so.
Building a new parking lot, access road and visitor station would cost $12 million to $14 million. As many
residents feared, this plan would not replenish the sand at the southern end of Assateague or at the new site
as they erode.
A public hearing in Chincoteague on June 26 failed to settle the matter. Thornton is calling for more study
before officials at Fish and Wildlife make a decision. Once a decision is made, Fish and Wildlife will
probably have to seek federal funding from Congress to proceed with relocation.
Hinds, the refuge manager who shepherded the original proposal, retired last year. The stalemate over how
to cope with the rising tide in this tiny town, he says, doesnt bode well for the rest of America. What do
you do then, he said, when you start talking about New York City?

Where retreating now or later is the only option
By Deborah J. Nelson and Duff Wilson C
EDING TO THE SEA: Tiny Saxis, Virginia, population 240, was unable to cover its share of the cost of
breakwaters that would have slowed the seas inundation of the town. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
SAXIS, Virginia This town on Chesapeake Bay is losing three to five feet (1 to 1.5 meters) of shoreline a
year and suffered damage during hurricane Sandy. But like hundreds of rural communities along the coast,
it is competing with much larger, more powerful neighbors for public funds to bankroll a response to rising
seas.
Coastal engineers say communities have three options for dealing with rising water levels and increased
flooding: defend the shoreline with natural or man-made barriers; adapt, such as by raising roads and
buildings; or retreat.
New York City is planning a $20 billion mix of defense and adaptation measures most notably,
construction of The Big U, a 10-mile (16-km) fortress of berms and movable walls around lower
Manhattan. Mayor Bill de Blasios office says three-quarters of the money needed over the next decade is
already in hand from federal, state and local sources.
For places like Saxis, population 240, the options are more stark: retreat now or retreat later.
Many Saxis residents watermen who harvest oysters, crabs and fish, and seafood industry workers trace
their ancestry to settlers in the 1600s and speak a language peppered with Elizabethan inflections. Some
dont hold out much hope for the future.
Little places like us, theres not going to be any help for us because whatever resources are available will
be sucked up by the big cities to try to defend them, said Grayson Chesser, a decoy carver, hunting guide
and Accomack County supervisor.
Its becoming more and more competitive for federal funds in terms of protecting communities.
Curtis Smith, Accomack-Northampton Planning District
Belinda, a nearby village where his grandfather was born, is one of several he cites that no longer exist,
abandoned when frequent flooding made them uninhabitable. Families relocated to higher ground, where
he resides today, but now its flooding, too.
A decade ago, Saxis managed to get federal approval for a $3.2 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
project to build eight breakwaters that would slow the seas advance. But the town couldnt scrape together
its required contribution of nearly $1 million, so the plan was killed.
The 700 residents of Tangier Island, a better-known historic Chesapeake enclave, waited nearly two
decades for $4.2 million in state and federal money to build a 430-foot-long seawall, jetty and stone
revetment. The project is scheduled to be finished by 2017.
Its becoming more and more competitive for federal funds in terms of protecting communities, said
Curtis Smith, a planner with the Accomack-Northampton Planning District. So Saxis is competing with
Miami and New York and Virginia Beach.
Virginia Beach, with a population of 438,000, has been the recipient of a federally funded seawall and two
major sand projects totaling more than $150 million since 1996.
Some Saxis residents have raised their houses to reduce the risk of flood damage. But thats only a partial
solution if the roads that connect them to grocery stores, hospitals and schools become impassable, Smith
said.
There, too, rural areas compete for funding with more heavily trafficked urban areas.
Accomack County has more miles of road in jeopardy from rising sea levels than anywhere else in
Virginia, a state study found. On the harder hit Chesapeake Bay side, some spots now flood nearly every
full moon.
The Virginia Department of Transportation is struggling with the question of how to combat increased
flooding in low-volume, low-population areas, said Chris Isdell, the departments representative in
Accomack County. Youre trying to fight back Mother Nature. ... How do you do that in a roadway that
sits at sea level?
Saxis residents may eventually have to face up to the same hard fate Chessers grandfathers community
did and abandon their homes.
I wish I could say I thought Saxis would be saved, but theres no way. It costs so much money, Chesser
said. And even if you spend the money, I dont think you can do it. I mean you just cant beat the ocean.
Youre going to lose every time.

Coming next: How U.S. policy promotes development along endangered shores.