This story was written and reported by media partners at the Bay Journal.
Sea spray soaks passengers on the edge of a boat heading for Tangier Island, VA, 13 miles east of the mainland. Captain Terry Parks talks about the places his community wants to protect with the island behind him. He points to a place on a Tangier map.
“That’s grandma’s house,” Parks said “We gotta protect grandma’s house.”
Tangier Island is one of the last inhabited islands in the Chesapeake Bay. But rising water and erosion threaten the community’s future as they eat away at the land. Advocates, local officials and scientists converged on the island on June 8 to talk about progress toward saving it.
Tangier is a special place for both animals and humans. It provides marsh habitat for nesting birds and underwater grasses for crabs. Most of its human residents descend from the British colonists who settled the island in the 1700s after Indigenous peoples used it for fishing. As a result, the community of watermen and their families have become a time capsule of what life on and along the water used to look like.
The island faces many environmental pressures. A 2015 study shows that the island is sinking due to groundwater extraction and the aftereffects from the meteor impact that created the Bay. The island is also in a “hot spot,” where the water is rising faster in the Bay than in the open ocean at about 6 millimeters per year. That may seem slow, but Tangier lost two-thirds of its land mass between 1850 and 2013. Powerful waves also erode its shores.
A 2021 study by the same author predicted that the town of Tangier will be uninhabited by 2053.
“When we talk about saving (Tangier), I’m talking about a way of life, a culture,” said James “Ooker” Eskridge, mayor of Tangier. “Some folks are saying maybe you should just give up and move to the mainland, but it’s home and we want to preserve it, and I think it’ll happen in time. Just gotta be patient.”
Tangier has become an example of how the U.S. could help its communities adapt to climate change. The federal government has already stepped in. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed a seawall to protect the airport in 1990 and a jetty just north of that 30 years later to protect crab and oyster boats.
But Tangier needs a lot more help. Two years ago, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation began bringing scientists and local leaders together to figure out how to save the island.
When some of them met on Tangier in June, Vespas and golf carts rumbled past one of its few restaurants. Inside, scientists, Bay Foundation staff and government officials from all levels ate crab cakes and listened to project updates. American flag garland enshrouded each table.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the engineering firm BayLand secured a $356,500 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to start building the Tangier Island Shoreline Protection and Resiliency Plan. It’s a gateway to apply to larger federal grants. So far, they’ve modeled flooding and mapped out the most vulnerable parts of the island.
Proposed solutions, such as restoring marshes and adding living shorelines, will help keep erosion at bay. In some areas, elevating homes or adding flood barriers may also be needed to reduce flooding along portions of the habitable ridges.
“If you can layer natural [and] nature-based solutions … you can get some benefit of reduction in wave, but there’s actually no studies that provide specific data on what that is,” said Carol Considine, director of applied projects in the Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience at Old Dominion University. “So that’s why the non-structural solutions of raising the houses are important if you really want to protect life.”
The Bay Foundation did not receive the next set of funds, about $1.2 million, to finish the final design and permitting phase of the plan. The next round of applications won’t open until February — which delays the project.
The next best shot they have at money is the Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund, which gives grants to reduce the impacts of flooding. That program will soon see a boost in funds now that Virginia has re-entered the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Gas plants in any state that is part of the initiative pay a fee for exceeding their emission limits, and some of that money could go to Tangier.
Since the initial 2024 meeting, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality gave Tangier $2.3 million to protect wastewater and petroleum storage facilities that are vulnerable to flooding.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has also been working to keep the main navigational channel clear. Sediment moves north to south and builds in the channel. The islanders need that channel open to go out and catch crabs or to access the vital mail boat.
The Corps plans on using dredged sediment to reduce shoreline erosion along the west side of the “Uppards,” or the northern part of the island where homes and graves used to be located.
As part of a larger project, the Corps and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science are building about 4,200 acres of oyster reef around the Bay. But they’re starting with 15 acres of reefs along the southern end of Tangier to help reduce erosion.
These projects could take a decade to install. But the town is running out of time. Greg Steele, Virginia’s chief resilience officer, said they’re trying to streamline the bureaucratic process by building relationships so that everyone is working toward a shared goal. But timelines are still limited by funding and the complexities of a project.
BayLand coastal engineer Evan Mazur is optimistic that the plan will help the island in the long term, especially with the attention of so many committed groups.
“Islands are disappearing in the Bay, and so supporting this archipelago while it’s still viable to be supported in this way, I think we have to seize that opportunity now,” Mazur said.