This story was reported and written by our media partner the Virginia Mercury.
The cost estimate for Norfolk’s delayed coastal storm risk management plan has more than doubled to $6.1 billion from $2.66 billion, officials confirmed this week, making the city’s required contribution more than $2 billion and clouding the beleaguered project’s future.
Even before the price tag soared, Norfolk officials said they could not afford their share without the state funding half of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project that is now scheduled for completion in 2037, five years later than originally scheduled.
A Corps spokesman confirmed on Thursday that the new cost estimate is $6.134 billion, including a 43.5% contingency because the design is ongoing.
An email from City Manager Pat Roberts, which The Mercury obtained, said design alignment, the addition of pump stations, cost estimate updates and inflation were responsible for the increase. When first presented to the city, the project’s cost was $1.4 billion.
So far, the state has contributed $50 million over two years to the project, half the annual amount the city sought. Requests for funding during the last two General Assembly sessions went unfulfilled.
Last year, according to emails and documents obtained by The Virginia Mercury through public records requests, Norfolk officials met with staff members supporting Democratic U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine andMark Warner and U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, to discuss possible legislative action to lower Norfolk’s share to 10%. Those talks are ongoing.
A memo of talking points from Deputy City Manager Doug Beaver before the July 2025 meetings with the congressional delegation outlined Norfolk’s concerns that the project “is progressing at a slower pace than anticipated because of District leadership and staff turnover and other impacts of the administration transition,” as well as “extended response times from key decision makers” impacting the cost.
A Warner spokesperson said Thursday that his staff was working with the city to ensure “the project remains on schedule and does not overburden the City of Norfolk.” No federal or state legislation has been filed to reduce the city’s required share.
City Manager Pat Roberts, Chief Resilience Officer Kyle Spencer, and Deputy City Manager Doug Beaver could not clear time on Thursday for an interview, according to a Norfolk spokesperson. Mayor Kenneth Alexander did not respond to an email request for comment.
Project background
The Norfolk plan is the first of the Army Corps’ proposed storm risk projects to edge towards construction, with the signing of a partnership agreement with the Corps in 2023. Other cities, including New York, Miami, and Charleston, have requested significant design changes in their own storm risk plans led by the Corps.
In Norfolk, the plan has met with opposition on multiple fronts.
Lower-income residents of the city’s historically Black Southside are upset that the plan does not include a wall to protect their shore.Wealthier residents of Freemason are critical of plans for a wall as high as 16.5 feet planned to run through their neighborhood, which would put some condominium buildings outside the wall and obscure the waterfront for other residents.
A congressional mandate requiring the benefit-cost ratio to be more than one dollar for every dollar spent on the project is why one neighborhood is slated to get a wall and another isn’t.. Because property values are the main measure of benefits, wealthy neighborhoods are likely to get more expensive concrete barriers.
Site work on the first phase, which includes a floodwall protecting the city’s minor league ballpark and a casino, is ongoing, with construction scheduled to begin next year.
Without the project, a 2019 Corps report estimated that all but a sliver of Norfolk’s interior would be at risk for flooding from a major storm by 2075. With the project, a feasibility study concluded there will be annual net benefits to the city of $122 million from reduced damage to businesses, homes and critical infrastructure, including health care facilities.
Congress appropriated $400 million to start the project in early 2022. When Norfolk City Council approved the partnership agreement more than a year later, it also approved a resolution that half the local share — then $465 million over 10 years — had to be funded by the state.
The city may refuse to fund its share at any point during the project. If that happens, the Corps can terminate construction unless the Corps’ assistant secretary for civil works “determines that continuation of such work is in the interest of the United States.”
The plan will protect against major storms and hurricanes but have a limited effect on tidal flooding, which is expected to reach up to 125 days annually by 2050, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other studies.
Critics question the approach.
“With that price tag, one needs to step back and ask if this is the best place to spend all of that money,” said Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. “Long-term nuisance flooding from king tides and rain-driven flooding are a greater threat to the long-term viability of Norfolk and all of Tidewater than the next storm.”
“The CSRM may help with king tide flooding to a degree, but it is not optimized for that hazard,” Young added.
A city spokesperson said Norfolk was “evaluating implementation strategies, including phased construction, to ensure the project can move forward in a fiscally responsible manner while still delivering meaningful flood protection.”
Money woes
The new estimate comes as Norfolk faces financial challenges with big-ticket items, including stormwater needs, the potential redevelopment of the MacArthur Center downtown, and renovations to Scope Arena and Chrysler Hall.
The cost of the new Maury High School has risen from $150 million two years ago to $220 million, squeezing the city’s debt capacity. In addition, projections for the annual revenue from a casino due for completion in 2027 have dropped in half, to $15 million.
“We do not have sufficient revenue authorities to raise the funds that are required,” Bryan Pennington, the city’s director of government relations, said last year. “We go every single year, asking to the best of our abilities for a reasonable appropriation from the General Assembly because we simply have nowhere else to go.”
But, so far, the General Assembly has been unwilling to commit significant funding to the project. Jay Ford, the Virginia policy manager for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, noted the city is in a timeline bind.
“There’s no chunk of cash sitting around that is going to be able to fully meet this cost share match for a project in Norfolk right now,” Ford said, noting that no state dollars were proposed for the project in this year’s legislative session.
The General Assembly last year passed legislation authorizing a study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission to create a methodology and criteria for state contributions to the local share of federal coastal storm risk management projects like the one approved by Norfolk and in the pipeline elsewhere.
That study is due for completion in 2028, meaning no legislative action would take place until the 2029 session, although Ford said local legislators could push for it to be finished sooner.
“So the state really does need to take the time to come up with the methodology for how they’re going to weigh these requests, how they’re going to make sure that these requests are in line with the state’s resilience principles that we’ve put in code and in our other programs, and how we’re going to do it in an equitable way, given the number of localities we know are going to be coming with the same type of request,” Ford said.
Storm risk plan feasibility studies by the Corps are moving forward for Hampton and Newport News, Northern Virginia and Virginia Beach, where a draft plan has been shared with the public and the price tag is expected to dwarf the Norfolk cost.
Ford noted the commonwealth is expected to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which could provide bridge funding until the JLARC study is complete, although the timing is uncertain.
The jump in price may offer the city a chance to renegotiate with the Corps, something other cities have done.
“Our frustration throughout this process has been that we’ve wanted to see the city kind of negotiate a little harder with the Corps,” Ford explained. “It feels sometimes like they’ve just been along for the ride. And, if we’re going to experience a bit of a budget crunch, maybe that’ll motivate them to get to the table and talk through sort of triaging and prioritizing these projects a little better.”
To him, that means a harder look at nature-based solutions, not expensive walls.
“The best available science has always been to make sure you invest more heavily in natural infrastructure, ” he said. “Concrete costs a lot, and these price tags are going to keep going up.
Recurrent flooding in Richmond, Northern Virginia and the southwest section of the state mean the RGGI funds will have to stretch far, Ford said,“and that’s before you factor in the eye-popping price tags on some of these CSRM (storm risk) projects.”
The Norfolk district of the Corps is scheduled to brief the city council on April 14 during its informal session. Residents who want to learn more about the project may visit the Resilient Norfolk website.