CHESAPEAKE

QUARTERLYMARYLAND SEA GRANT COLLEGE • VOLUME 13, NUMBERS 2 & 3

ComeCome HighHigh WaterWater SeaSea LevelLevel RiseRise andand ChesapeakeChesapeake BayBay contents Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 Reckoning The Rising: Why Sea Level 14 The Future of Blackwater Is Increasing Can humans help wetlands survive Seas are rising in the the rising seas? issue of our magazine 4 The Antarctic Connection The Bay feels the toll of melting ice The Response: How People and other global changes. Are Adapting

8 As the Land Sinks 18 When Sandy Came to Crisfield Geologic shifts worsen the impacts The flooding of Crisfield surprised of sea level rise. forecasters and first responders.

The Costs: Effects on 23 Washington, D.C., Floodgates People and the Land Can engineers keep storm surges away from the nation’s monuments? 10 Snapshots from the Edge For More on Sea Level Rise In low-lying Dorchester and Somerset counties, residents can see 28 References and Tools the effects of rising seas today. Links to reports and web pages.

More Stories and Information Online The web version of this special issue of our magazine has a number of online-only stories about sea level rise in the Chesapeake Bay region. hen European settlers put You can read summaries of these articles on pages 9, 17, and 27. To read the entire issue online, scan the QR code at right or visit down roots around this www.chesapeakequarterly.net/sealevel Westuary in the 1600s, many likely didn’t recognize how changeable the Chesapeake Bay could be. They thought that the islands and CHESAPEAKE QUARTERLY October 2014 curving shorelines had always been here, Chesapeake Quarterly explores scientific, environmental, and cultural issues relevant to the Chesapeake Bay and its ready to provide an enduring home. But watershed. The magazine is produced and funded by the Maryland Sea Grant College. geological evidence tells a different story. The Maryland Sea Grant College program is led by Director Fredrika Moser and receives support from the Global warmings and coolings over National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin is tration and the state of Maryland. Editors, Michael W. Fincham and the millennia have brought the birth and Jeffrey Brainard; Science Writer, Daniel Strain; Production Editor and Art Director, Sandy Rodgers. This expanded decline of multiple Chesapeake Bays. issue, including print and additional content online, was written in collaboration with Bay Journal, a newspaper that covers the Chesapeake Bay. Send items for the magazine to: When temperatures cooled, the great gla- Maryland Sea Grant College ciers and ice sheets expanded and sea 4321 Hartwick Road, Suite 300 level fell. When temperatures warmed, University System of Maryland the ice melted and sea level rose. As they College Park, Maryland 20740 301.405.7500, fax 301.314.5780 rose, they drowned the valley of an e-mail: [email protected] ancient Susquehanna River, turning it www.mdsg.umd.edu / www.chesapeakequarterly.net into an estuary. About 10,000 years ago, rapidly rising ocean waters invaded the area near Norfolk and began to fill our Cover photo: This house on Holland Island in the Chesapeake Bay stood for more than a century. But the estuary’s water level rose, the island eroded, and the inhabitants left. In 2010, the house current Chesapeake Bay. The rate of rise — the last one left on the island — was swept into the Bay by encroaching waves. Pages 2 and 3: later slowed, and our estuary took its Maryland is experiencing one of the fastest rates of sea level rise in the nation. It also has some of the lowest-lying land, like this part of Dorchester County where Maple Dam Road has been flooded present shape only 3,000 years ago. during high tides. PHOTOS, DAVID HARP Today, the pace of sea level rise is with the Rising Chesapeake region, flooding Bay shores. This special examines by how much, and what we can do.

increasing again. Tide gauges scattered up ous when big storms blow over. Higher special issue of our magazine. Why are and down the Mid-Atlantic coast show sea level brings taller storm surges and the oceans expanding and how high will that water levels here are already rising at more flooding. In October 2012, they go? What are the best scientific the fastest rates seen in thousands of years Hurricane Sandy pushed five feet of explanations? We also looked at the and among the fastest in the United water into Crisfield, Maryland. It was an effects on people, on Bayside residents States. The rise is forecast to accelerate in alarm call warning residents, builders, and who are seeing firsthand the loss of low- coming decades. Scientists have docu- government officials around the Bay to lying land. mented a variety of causes, many of them prepare for more high water in the future. The changes touch all of us, including driven mainly by human activities like Adding to the urgency was a scientific those who don’t live right on the Bay. emissions of greenhouse gases by indus- analysis completed in 2013. A team of sci- Taxpayers are underwriting flood insur- tries and vehicles around the world. entists projected that the sea level around ance programs. State and federal officials The annual rise in the Bay’s waters Maryland might rise by 1.4 feet by 2050. are planning sea walls and flood walls and seems small, about four millimeters a year, Those numbers shoot up to estimates of changes to roads and other infrastructure and its effects are not very obvious to the 3.7 to 5.7 feet by the end of the century. — all with the hope of holding back the occasional visitor. Look carefully, though, The toll from such a rise would be vast: water. and you can see some of them. Wood- scientists with the organization Climate An overriding, unanswered question: lands on the lower Eastern Shore have Central report that in Maryland alone, how much land, property, and heritage become marshlands dotted with dead more than 55,000 people live in homes can be preserved? And at what cost? white tree trunks, victims of salt water less than five feet above the local high- Additional articles and expanded flowing in from the Bay. In other places, tide line. This zone holds 41,000 homes information on the subject of sea level the changes are more obvious. Shorelines and $19.6 billion in property value. rise are available on a special website.To like those on Maryland’s Smith Island To examine these forecasts and their check them out, scan the QR code on and Virginia’s Tangier Island are steadily implications in depth, Chesapeake the opposite page, or visit the web at: eroding. Quarterly teamed up with the Bay Journal www.chesapeakequarterly.net/sealevel. The changes are even more conspicu- newspaper to produce the articles in this — The Editors

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 3 THE RISING: THE ANTARCTIC Why Sea Level CONNECTION Is Increasing New research shows that polar ice sheets could become a big contributor to sea level rise

Daniel Strain

hen Ron Anderson was a around the Delmarva Peninsula for as teenager in the 1970s, he long as humans have lived here. But now, W liked to watch the sun set sea level rise is speeding up this give and over Benoni Point. The spit of land sat take between land and water. As water about a mile west of Oxford, Maryland, levels climb around towns like Oxford, over the Tred Avon River. Even then, waves reach farther and farther inland, Sea level rise is a global there wasn’t much to it. “It was just this altering the landscape and posing risks to phenomenon, but one that can little point of land with just these big people. affect life around the Chesapeake pine trees and nothing else,” says After Tropical Storm Isabel swept Bay in many different ways. Anderson, who grew up in Easton, not through the region in 2003, for instance, far from Oxford on Maryland’s Eastern the flooding was so bad that Anderson Scientists estimate that this Shore. and members of his fire company rode region’s rate of sea level rise will Today, there’s almost nothing left of small powerboats down streets to aid accelerate. They have also Benoni Point. Over the decades, waves stranded residents. investigated the causes: ice sheets carved away at the land, and rising waters Sea level is rising around the world, a around the world are melting killed off the pine trees, leaving only a trend scientists have attributed to climate small sandy island behind. change. Now, new observations are show- and land surfaces around the Anderson is an aquatic toxicologist at ing that levels on the Mid-Atlantic coast Chesapeake are sinking. What the Wye Research and Education Center, may be climbing at some of the fastest can we expect in the future? a University of Maryland facility near rates seen in the United States. A number Queenstown. The 55-year-old now lives of factors are responsible for this rise in in Oxford and is a member of the town’s water around the Chesapeake Bay. volunteer fire company. Stories like his Emerging research suggests that one of are common up and down the Eastern the biggest contributors to local sea level Shore. rise will come from what may seem an “Everyone who lives here has seen unlikely place: Antarctica. areas go back to the sea,” he says, “or put “There are some pretty stark differ- up bulkheads where they didn’t have to ences that you see if you compare the sea 40 years ago.” level rise at a place like Baltimore to, say, To be sure, the Bay has eroded land Juneau, Alaska,” says John Boon, a physi- PHOTO, DAVID HARP Ice loss proceeds at a staggering rate along the front of Thwaites Glacier (pictured here in 2012), part of the rapidly melting Amundsen Sea sector of Antarctica (map below). Ron Anderson (below, left) of Oxford, Maryland, has seen the toll of these global changes on the state’s coast. CREDITS: PHOTO OF GLACIER AND MAP ILLUSTRATION, NASA; PHOTO OF RON ANDERSON, DANIEL STRAIN

Oceanographers have identified sev- eral factors contributing to this rapid rise in sea level locally. To start off, con- sider the chemistry of water itself. Because of how water molecules move and interact, warmer water tends to take up more space than colder water. That matters today because most of the earth’s oceans are warmer than they used to be, mostly because of manmade climate change. What is more, in the Chesapeake Bay by some estimates, the increase in certain and Mid-Atlantic regions, not only is the areas is three to four times as fast. For ocean rising, the land is also sinking. It’s a most of the 20th century, that global natural change that has been going on cal oceanographer and a professor emeri- average was around 1.7 millimeters a since the end of the last ice age (see As tus at the Virginia Institute of Marine year, according to the Intergovernmental the Land Sinks, p. 8). Science in Gloucester. The question is, Panel on Climate Change, a group that In the case of these two factors — “What’s the reason for this?” disseminates the findings of climate expanding oceans and sinking land — science research. scientists have a good understanding of Antarctica’s Fingerprint Scientists expect that these rates of sea how much sea level rise we can expect as The question is an important one on the level rise will accelerate in the decades the world warms. Less certain is what the Bay and along the Mid-Atlantic coastline ahead. By 2050, researchers estimate that contribution will be from a third player: — an area that many scientists are now sea level off the coast of Maryland is melting ice. referring to as a “hot spot” for sea level likely to rise by a total of around 1.4 feet And there is a lot of ice sitting on top rise. (0.4 meters). Or by at least 0.9 feet and as of the land masses of Greenland and Here, water levels as measured by tide much as 2.1 feet. Those are the estimates Antarctica. Scientists refer to these ice gauges around Baltimore and other towns of a 2013 scientific review led by the sheets, along with other frozen parts of in the region seem to be climbing twice University of Maryland Center for the globe, as the “cryosphere.”The as fast as the global average increase. And Environmental Science. physics of how these environments melt

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 5 are complicated, and scientists are What’s Driving Sea Level Rise working to better understand how the Sea level is rising along Maryland’s coasts faster than the global average increase. Scientists planet’s glaciers are going to behave in a identified causes and estimated the likely contribution of each. warming world. World- It is clear, however, that Greenland Maryland wide and Antarctica are losing ice, and losing it Year Amount of sea level rise (in feet) (in feet) fast, with some glaciers at the water’s Ocean Other edge shrinking backward by hundreds or thermal Antarctica Greenland glaciers Gulf Stream Sinking expansion melting melting melting change land Total Total thousands of feet every year. As this ice By 2050 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.2 1.4 0.9 melts, it adds water to oceans and raises By 2100 0.8 1.0 0.3 0.4 0.6 0.5 3.7 2.7 global sea level — like turning on the Note: Subtotals are rounded and so may not sum to total. faucet in your bathtub. Antarctica is, in many ways, the king 1.4 Sea Level Rise of the cryosphere. Greenland is melting at 1.35 Fingerprint a faster rate, but the southern continent 1.3 holds a lot more ice, says Christopher 1.26 The map at left depicts the melting 1.2 "fingerprint" that would arise if the Shuman, a geoscientist at the Joint 1.15 West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed Center for Earth Systems Technology, a 1.1 today. Dark red zones show areas where the sea level would rise by up 1.05 collaboration between the University of to 40 percent more than the average 1

Maryland Baltimore County and the mean sea level rise change in sea level around the globe. Difference from global Difference 0.5 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In Dark blue zones show where the 0 level would actually fall. total, there’s enough ice on Antarctica to raise the world’s oceans by more than A dangerous mix, sea level rise along the Chesapeake Bay stems from a variety of 200 feet. factors , according to a scientific review led by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (table, above). Together, these factors make the region a “hot spot” for sea level rise and “That’s what makes it the 800-pound include the impacts of sinking land, melting ice in Antarctica, and changes to the flow of the Gulf gorilla compared to the more rapidly Stream. TABLE SOURCE, “UPDATING MARYLAND’S SEA-LEVEL RISE PROJECTIONS” REPORT; MAP, COURTESY OF CARLING HAY AND ELSEVIER changing parts of the cryosphere,” Shuman says. them starts to flow away. The result is that though Greenland is a lot closer. For It may seem strange that Maryland’s sea level will drop in areas close to the every one millimeter that melting glaciers coasts could be threatened by a continent glacier. on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet add to thousands of miles away at the earth’s “So if you melt Greenland, you cause global sea level, waters along the Mid- South Pole. But when ice sheets melt, sea a sea level fall in Scotland,” Kopp says. “If Atlantic coast rise by around 1.2 millime- level doesn’t rise evenly across the globe you melt a glacier in Alaska, you cause a ters, an increase of 20 percent. — sea level off Baltimore is rising at a sea level fall in Seattle.” It’s a small bump. But over time, it fast clip and it’s actually falling near But if sea level drops in those loca- could contribute to the fast rates of sea Juneau, Alaska, for instance. Scientists tions, then it has to rise somewhere else. level rise observed in the Mid-Atlantic. describe the pattern of sea level rise Water will tend to build up as far away “The United States East Coast is poorly caused by ice loss from a particular ice from the melting ice sheet as possible, located in terms of ice sheet melting,” says sheet as a melting “fingerprint.” Kopp says. That doesn’t mean, however, Carling Hay, a postdoctoral researcher at Gravity is one of the main driving that sea level rise from Antarctica is con- Harvard University. forces behind these fingerprints. “There’s centrated around the North Pole. A num- Which makes it all the more worri- a number of things that happen when ber of gravitational forces, in fact, add some that the 800-pound gorilla that you melt an ice sheet that have to do together to put the East Coast of the Christopher Shuman describes seems to with the fact that ice sheets are really United States right in the middle of be waking up. big,” says Robert Kopp, a climate scientist Antarctica’s melting fingerprint — in par- at Rutgers University in New Jersey. ticular, the fingerprint from glaciers on Hanging by its Fingertips He explains that ice sheets, especially the western, and more rapidly melting, Shuman specializes in studying ice loss on those sitting on top of Greenland and half of the continent called the West Antarctica. But like Ron Anderson from Antarctica, are so big that they carry their Antarctic Ice Sheet. Oxford, he’s seen the evidence of sea level own gravitational pull that draws water Because of this fingerprint, melting of rise closer to home. toward them. When those ice sheets melt, ice on Antarctica adds more to sea level The geoscientist grew up in the their gravitational pull weakens, and all near the Chesapeake than melting on Philadelphia area and spent family vaca- the water that had been drawn toward Greenland, pound for pound — even tions in his grandparents’ cabin on the

6 • Chesapeake Quarterly take hundreds to more than a thousand years to play out. That’s a long time for people, but a blink of an eye in the life- time of a glacier like Thwaites. The findings by Rignot and his col- leagues were also published in Geophysical Research Letters. A second scientific team reached similar conclusions in a study published on the same day in the journal Science. Despite findings like these, Anandakrishnan says he’s an optimist. Even if the loss of the Amundsen Sea Embayment glaciers is unavoidable, other glaciers in Antarctica and elsewhere don’t have to endure the same fate. “There are certainly a lot of glaciers that could be saved if you were to take action,” he says. Using satellites, scientists like Christopher Shuman gain a bird’s-eye view of melting ice Humans can, in other words, slow the in Antarctica and Greenland. Here, the NASA scientist stands in front of a visualization of ice loss from the Antarctic Peninsula. Like in other parts of the southern continent, segments of this stretch of melting of the world’s ice by combatting ice have been retreating away from the ocean by tens of feet or more every year. PHOTO, MICHAEL FINCHAM climate change, through actions like reducing the use of fossil fuels. Elk River near Cecilton, Maryland. Today, tists say. “You don’t need a very large In the end, the loss of glaciers on some of his cousins own the house. Like amount of sea level rise when you couple Antarctica is a global problem. But it’s so many other property owners in it to something like a storm surge,” says one that can affect life in coastal commu- Maryland, they’ve seen the handiwork of Sridhar Anandakrishnan, who studies gla- nities across the planet. Here on the rising waters. These days, when a big ciers at Pennsylvania State University. Chesapeake Bay, the way of life in towns storm hits the Chesapeake, waves often In a second paper published in 2014, a like Oxford is tied to what happens to wash over the family’s dock. team led by Eric Rignot at the University these blocks of ice thousands of miles “It’s a special place to us,” Shuman of California, Irvine, explored the fate of away. While the science on sea level rise says. “It’s also a pretty good vantage point a handful of glaciers on the West Antarctic isn’t complete yet, it’s clear that the gen- for appreciating the world that’s evolving Ice Sheet — most notably the massive eral trend presents unpleasant prospects around us.” Thwaites Glacier. These chunks of frozen for people who live near the Bay’s waters. In recent years, scientists have learned water border the Amundsen Sea Ron Anderson, the toxicologist who more about the role that Antarctica will Embayment, a large of body of water that lives in Oxford, saw a number of his play in this evolving world. Their research has grown increasingly warm over the neighbors lose their homes after Tropical points to big losses in the years to come. years. Storm Isabel swept through town. He was In one study published in June 2014, The glaciers may also be beyond sav- in slightly better shape. His house sits for instance, a group of British researchers ing. According to the team’s analysis, about six feet above sea level, which saved used satellite data to measure the pace of Thwaites and a handful of neighboring it from the bulk of the flooding. ice loss across Antarctica. Based on their ice masses may have melted by so much Anderson says that he and his wife don’t results, which appeared in the journal already that they passed what scientists have any plans to move any time soon. Geophysical Research Letters, that loss is call a “tipping point” — huge portions of But he still worries about what is going proceeding at a gallop. Between 2010 and the region could collapse into the sea no to happen in the lifetime of his daughter, 2013, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone matter what happens to the climate. In who is now in college. lost close to 150 billion tons of ice each all, that might be enough melted ice to “It might be easier for us to just stipu- year on average, the team reported. That’s raise the world’s oceans by four feet. late in our will that our house be sold enough ice to add nearly four-tenths of a That’s enough to permanently drown versus letting our daughter move in and millimeter to global sea level annually. whole segments of the Eastern Shore of get flooded in the future,” Anderson says. Even small increases in sea level like Maryland. “Because it’s a horrible thing. I’ve seen it these can worsen flooding and the dam- The good news for those who live on happen to many people and I’d hate to age it causes in coastal communities, espe- the Eastern Shore is that because these see my daughter go through that.” cially during big storms like Isabel, scien- glaciers are so big, the process will likely — [email protected]

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 7 of Marine Science in Gloucester. Similarly, “the forebulge that we have here is... going back down.” In Maryland and Virginia, a network of GPS stations, operated by the National Geodetic Survey, has tracked this shifting in the land for several decades. Based on this and other data, researchers estimate that land surfaces around the estuary are falling by around 1.5 millimeters each year because of the ongoing rebound from the last ice age. But some towns on the estuary seem to be sinking a lot AS THE faster: the number for the Hampton Roads area is closer to 4 millimeters each LAND year on average . SINKS “This question kept coming up of Daniel Strain what was causing this land subsidence,” says Whitney Katchmark. She heads up the Water Resources Department in the s tourism Around the Chesapeake area like Hampton Hampton Roads Planning District slogans go, Roads, where some Commission, which advises towns in the A “Hampton Bay, sinking land is towns already flood region. Roads: Where the exacerbating the effects during run-of-the- The most obvious answer was Land Sinks” probably mill high tide events. groundwater withdrawal by municipal won’t draw in crowds of sea level rise “When the next water utilities and other users. of visitors. But big hurricane hits, it To understand why, think of a jelly among scientists, will be worse doughnut. Like the raspberry filling that’s the reputation that this region of because of the land subsidence,” says Jack inside these morning treats, groundwater Virginia is building. Eggleston, a hydrologist with the U.S. is stored in aquifers. That’s the name for Manmade climate change is driving Geological Survey (USGS) in Reston, large formations of sand and clay that sit up water levels all around the world. But Virginia. tens to hundreds of feet below the land communities on the Chesapeake Bay, This subsidence results from natural surface. The Hampton Roads area gets its including those in the densely populated processes thousands of years old whose groundwater from the Potomac Aquifer, a Hampton Roads area near the estuary’s effects resemble a game of teeter-totter. formation that extends from North mouth, have to contend with another During the last ice age, a massive gla- Carolina up into New Jersey. When you threat that worsens the effect of rising cier called the Laurentide Ice Sheet tap a well into one of these formations water. Across Maryland and Virginia, the stretched from Canada down into and draw out water continuously, it’s a bit land is gradually sinking, a process that Pennsylvania and New Jersey.The ice was like removing the filling from your scientists call subsidence. These changes so heavy that it pushed down the land doughnut. Like with the pastry, if you are caused by long-term geological shifts underneath it. At the same time, the land remove too much water from an aquifer, occurring across the Mid-Atlantic region. just outside of the glacier’s edge — what the aquifer can collapse down on itself. New research also suggests that human we now call the Mid-Atlantic coast — When it does, the land above it will also activities may be making the situation reacted like the other end of a play- begin to sag. worse. ground seesaw: it was forced up into Researchers have observed this phe- Subsidence adds to what is known as what’s called a glacial forebulge. nomenon in action across the country, relative sea level rise, a term that describes Then, around 18,000 years ago, all most notably in the Houston-Galveston the combined effects of rising oceans and that ice started to melt, and the seesaw area of Texas. There, residents saw the the sinking of land surfaces. It’s a bit like started to flip back. “Now that the ice has land fall by as much as 10 feet during the a ship going down in a gale: sinking been removed, there’s a rebound” in the course of the 20th century. towns dip closer down to the water, mak- land to the north of the Mid-Atlantic, Coastal Virginia uses less groundwater ing them more vulnerable to storms and says John Boon, an oceanographer and than Houston and Galveston but still flooding. That’s reason for concern in an professor emeritus at the Virginia Institute depends on wells to slake thirsts and sup-

8 • Chesapeake Quarterly Online Features: www. chesapeakequarterly.net/sealevel

The Gulf Stream’s Pull

Scientists have long suspected that climate change could force the Gulf Stream, a massive current in the Atlantic

NASA Ocean, to slow down. Recent research suggests that this shift may already be underway, and it could be helping to drive up water lev- els across the Mid-Atlantic coastline — causing an acceleration in sea level rise not seen anywhere else in North America. Many researchers, however , Floodwater seeps onto streets during a high-water event in the Ghent neighborhood of are still skeptical. Norfolk, Virginia (opposite page). Scientists say that patterns of subsidence in coastal Virginia will make floods like this one more common. The rates of land sinking, however, vary from place to place based on how much groundwater towns and businesses draw up, as this map shows. The red contour Storm Surge: Blowing lines show the rates of subsidence, in millimeters per year, from 1940 to 1971. The fastest sinking sites are centered around the towns of West Point and Franklin. Both communities are home to large Baltimore Away paper mills that pull up a lot of water from wells. PHOTO, DAVID HARP; MAP, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY The biggest threat port industries. In 2012 the Hampton groundwater. In all, the scientists esti- to Baltimore is not Roads area, which is home to about 1.7 mated that groundwater withdrawal the perfect storm million people, got about 16 percent of caused about half of the subsidence seen — it’s the perfect its water from wells, Katchmark says. That around coastal Virginia during the last storm surge. Big added up to around 45 million gallons of several decades. Groundwater withdrawal winds drive a bulge of water up groundwater drawn per day. could also be worsening subsidence in

Michael Kearney the Chesapeake In 2013, Eggleston and a USGS col- Maryland, but scientists have not studied Bay just as other bulges are also barging league, Jason Pope, wrote a report issued the problem there as thoroughly as they north: the long wave of a full-moon by the agency on the causes of land sub- have in Virginia. tide, the big slosh from an oscillating sidence in the southern Bay region — or In that more southern state, some seiche event, the dome of water from Gloucester County,Virginia, on the small solutions to this problem may be beneath a low-pressure storm center. York River, to the North Carolina bor- brewing, says Scott Kudlas, director of the Add in sea level rise, the physics of fric- der. The report was commissioned by Office of Water Supply in the Virginia tion, the geometry of the Bay, and Katchmark’s planning district. In it, the Department of Environmental Quality you’ve got faster, taller waves headed for USGS scientists summarized a number of (DEQ). In order to safeguard its water Fells Point. existing studies on the connection supply, the state set up a permitting pro- between groundwater withdrawal and the gram for groundwater withdrawal in issued close to 170 groundwater permits sinking of land surfaces in Virginia. While 1992. Today, businesses and residential in the Hampton Roads region. A large a few other factors can influence subsi- developments in coastal Virginia that use number happen to be up for renewal in dence patterns to a small degree, a more than 300,000 gallons of well water the next year or so. That could give the number of lines of evidence point the in any one month out of the year are DEQ an opportunity to try to put new finger at water usage. required to apply for a groundwater per- caps on how much water those big users Eggleston and Pope reported, for mit. To put that number into perspective, draw up, Kudlas says: “A lot of decisions instance, that areas where the land is the average household uses around 9,000 will be made in the next two years.” falling the fastest tend to line up with gallons of water in a month. — [email protected] where people have pumped out the most As of 2013, Kudlas’s department had

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 9 THE COSTS: SNAPSHOTS FROM Effects on THE DGE People and E Rona Kobell, Bay Journal the Land

ll over In this eroding Eastern of their yards, fixes low-lying such as the recon- A Dorchester Shore region, flooding is a struction of barrier County, residents are common sight, and not islands in the living on the edge. Chesapeake Bay. One skid off the road just after big storms. “I talk very care- puts a car in a marsh. fully on the Eastern Parking in the wrong place during the Shore,” said Bill Boicourt, an oceanogra- wrong arc of a tide cycle can lead to a pher who has studied the area’s rising flooded car. Water that used to just graze waters and is based at the Horn Point residents’ yards now comes up to the Laboratory at the University of porches; it’s just a matter of time, they Maryland’s Center for Environmental know, before it comes into the houses. Science in Cambridge. Several times a Here, in the land of narrow marshes year, Boicourt speaks to church groups and proud working waterfront towns, the and civic organizations about how cli- high water isn’t just coming. It’s already mate change works, how temperatures Across the Chesapeake Bay region, here. and sea level and storm surges are rising diverse communities, both natural School buses can’t get down the road while land along the Eastern Shore is and human, are already feeling the like they once did, and those roads need sinking. Not everyone buys his message. toll of sea level rise. Wetlands constant repair. Land at the edge of banks “I respect their perspective,” he said. is fast disappearing, swept away in tides “They range from an open skepticism disappear into the estuary as the and storms. Forests are dying, inundated (about climate change) to a closed water rises. Floods damage homes, by rising salt water. New homes are skepticism .” businesses, shorelines, and roads. being built at least a foot higher than in It might seem surprising to find Local residents are looking for the past. And storms, particularly tropical skepticism about sea level rise in systems and hurricanes with their atten- Dorchester County. Stretching south outside help and worrying about dant storm surges, push water ever higher from the Choptank River down to the the future of their communities. along these shores. Nanticoke, this low-lying county is laced But many longtime county residents with rivers, creeks, bays, and swamps that don’t connect the problems to the two frequently flood the land. underlying phenomena that scientists say And more high water is coming. A lie at the root of rising waters here on scientific panel concluded in 2013 that the lower Delmarva Peninsula — climate sea level on Maryland’s coasts is likely to change that raises sea level and sinking rise over the next century by 3.7 feet land. and as much as 5.7 feet. The current rate They know what they are seeing, but of increase is about twice the national many blame the problem on erosion, or average. Dorchester is especially vulnera- “tides.” Many don’t want to talk about ble to higher waters because it is the melting ice sheets or greenhouse gas second -lowest-lying county in Maryland emissions. They want to talk about fixes (after neighboring Somerset County) and

PHOTO, DAVID HARP today that may help to get the water out one of the lowest in the United States. More than half of Dorchester is less than Growing up in Dorchester County, five feet above sea level. Prevailing winds MD James Adkins (above), adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard, explored Wroten blow across the estuary from the north- DE Island, where his ancestors once lived and were west, building up wave energy aimed buried. Today, their graves are underwater in Chesapeake right at the lower Eastern Shore. MD the Chesapeake. And headstones like those Looking around, it’s easy to see what’s shown here on Wroten and elsewhere on the Dorchester lower Eastern Shore are at risk of being VA VA already gone. On Hooper’s Island, resi- Bay County submerged . PHOTO, DAVID HARP dents lose about 24 acres a year. Hooper’s was once three islands: the high ground Chesapeake Bay of Fishing Creek, the middle ground of doors. Another day, some children didn’t Hoopersville, and the lower island, bother riding the bus to school because known as Applegarth. Islanders lost the of flooding from high storm tides. They bridge to Applegarth in a 1933 storm; weren’t sure they’d get home. fewer than 100 residents inhabit It’s a struggle to maintain the island’s Hoopersville now, and more leave every roads with the county’s $3.6 million year. Fishing Creek is on relatively high driver in a place where buses never last annual transportation budget. Trucks ground, but people there grapple with long because of saltwater damage. Rare rumble down the road to Bishop’s Head floods during high tides and even among his neighbors, Newcomb does with fill and dirt and come back empty. unnamed storms. think the rising waters in the Bay are The road gets repaired, but then like Jay Newcomb understands this prob- related to melting polar ice. many other roads, it washes out again. lem all too well. He’s the president of the One day last year, near Toddville, chil- Septic fields and wells flood, too, and Dorchester County Council, the manager dren riding his bus took off their shoes residents must worry about the contents of Old Salty’s, a popular Hooper’s Island and hiked up their pants before wading of fuel tanks leaking out in the high restaurant, and a longtime school bus through high water to get to their front waters and contaminating wells and soils.

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 11 Average Sea Level Rise, Cambridge, Maryland

0.45 0.30 Data with average seasonal cycle removed 0.15 0.00

Meters -0.15 -0.30 -0.45 Linear mean sea level trend -0.60 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Some waterfront property owners around Maryland regard rising water and erosion as temporary trends. But tide gauges in the Chesapeake Bay have recorded a steady rise in water level, as shown by these data (graph, above) from a gauge on the Choptank River in Cambridge, Maryland. Here, sea level is shown on a relative scale. Extrapolating, the Cambridge data indicate a total rise of 1.14 feet in 100 years. During the 35 years that Harold Cartright (right) has lived on Hooper’s Island in Dorchester County, his property has been flooded by Hurricanes Fran, Isabel, and Sandy. On a utility pole on his property, he recorded their names — and heights. Here he points to a tag for Isabel in 2003. “I want this as a permanent record,” he said, “of what hurricanes did to this property.” PHOTO, DAVID HARP; GRAPH, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

The conditions have prompted many Shockley’s father, Dorsey, describes as Taylor’s Island at the northern end of people to leave. “waterfront and waterback.” A tough Dorchester County. The Corps has “We have less kids here all the time,” businessman who’s won just about every enjoyed success using this approach to Newcomb said. “We used to have three award for his innovations — even one replenish another barrier island, Poplar buses taking kids to Cambridge for high from the White House — Johnny Island, offshore from Tilghman Island. school. Now, there’s just one bus.” Shockley becomes surprisingly emotional Once a shrunken remnant measuring just Disappearing trees are another stark remembering his now-lost boyhood four acres, Poplar now holds more than example of sea level rise in the region, woods. “Those trees are dying. It’s obvi- 1,000 acres of restored land. To do the says Johnny Shockley, a 50-year-old ous,” Shockley said. “Where the marshes same for Barren and James, the estimated entrepreneur who’s stayed in the area to meet the woods, the marsh is taking price tag: $2.8 billion in 2008. run the Hoopers Island Oyster Aqua - over.” For years, funding for this proposed culture Company. As a boy he ran along What are the options? Many of the Mid-Chesapeake Bay Island project has Wesley Church Road, through woods residents along Dorchester’s low-lying been stalled. “Back in 1990, the Army that are now marshes dotted with acres shoreline believe that the state and federal Corps of Engineers did a study. They rec- of dead trees, their long, sad trunks gray- governments could do more to protect ommended protection for certain hot ing from the Bay’s brackish waters. county residents. In particular, they advo- spots. Now, 24 years later, they haven’t Shockley, however, remains a skeptic cate building up barrier islands in the done a thing,” lamented Bruce Colson, about whether this is the product of cli- Chesapeake that once offered this stretch who owns the Taylor’s Island Family mate change. He knows that scientists of the Dorchester shoreline protection Campground along Bay Shore Road, just have presented evidence that warming from storms and erosion. Many of these 15 miles north of Hooper’s Island. “It temperatures globally are at least partly to islands are gone, and others that remain seems like it takes the government so long blame for Dorchester’s higher water. He’s are washing away. to get anything done.” just not sure he believes it. “I understand A decade ago, the Army Corps of The delays have cost Colson. He owns the concept, the reasons why they’re say- Engineers raised hopes of residents by 15 acres, according to his deed. Five are ing we got global warming,” he said. “But proposing to use sediment dredged from now unusable, having been swallowed by I can’t verify what they’re saying is true.” the Bay’s shipping channels to replenish rising water. Colson, too, says the sea level Shockley loves his threatened island two of these disappearing islands, Barren is not rising. He blames his problems on and wouldn’t want to have his oyster Island and neighboring James Island. A erosion. farm anywhere else. He’s got breakwaters rebuilt Barren Island would help shield As vice president of the Dorchester reinforcing his waterside facility, which the shorelines along Hooper’s Island. And County Shoreline Erosion group, he leads offers a panoramic view of what an expanded James Island would protect a citizen organization that advises home-

12 • Chesapeake Quarterly To reduce erosion along Dorchester’s shoreline, the government should build up two nearby barrier islands, Barren and James, says Bruce Colson (left), who owns the Taylor’s Island Family Campground. On Hooper's Island (right), a dump truck plows through high water being pushed off the Bay and across the narrow bridge that connects the upper and middle parts of the island. Sea level rise allows storms to push water further inland. PHOTOS, DAVID HARP owners on options for property protec - takes his boat, the Rock-Crazier, to the Toddville, near marshes holding stands of tions . There are state tax credits for shore- coves and inlets around James Island, dead trees. Today, the graves of Adkins’ line protection, for example, as well as searching its Jurassic-like terrain for ancestors are underwater in the assistance for building a living shoreline wildlife. One day in 2013, he was fishing Chesapeake. (a buffer of natural vegetation, more envi- along a small beach at James Island. The Adkins still comes back to the lower ronmentally friendly than hardened sea next day, the beach was gone — erosion, shore. He and his wife Mary Anne keep walls). The group also has been lobbying Brown said. a condominium high above Crisfield’s for the Corps to begin the Mid- Each spring, on the first nice day, City Dock. From there he can see the Chesapeake Bay Island projects. Brown sets off for James to see what was Chesapeake glistening and the lights still Now there’s new hope. The Water lost during the winter. At times, he’s esti- on in the large peeler crab operations Resources Reform and Development Act mated the loss at more than 100 feet. below. But also he sees a city in tatters. of 2014, which President Obama signed Trees grow out of the water, like dead Handwritten “for sale” signs adorn many into law in June, authorizes the work. sticks, to mark the places no longer shop windows. The former Sterling Congress hasn’t appropriated the money, there. Hardware Building on Main Street sold however. And despite the hopes of resi- “She’s washing away. Simple as that,” at auction for just $30,000 in June. It had dents that the work may protect their Brown said. “She’s washing away.” previously sold for $700,000. The city shores, the project is listed as an environ- Perhaps no one understands both the still calls itself the “seafood capital of the mental restoration project, rather than a devastation the floods can bring and the world,” but it hardly resembles the thriv- hurricane and storm damage risk reduc- pull of these low-lying lands better than ing waterman’s town where Mary Anne tion project. James Adkins. When Hurricane Sandy Adkins grew up in the 1960s and where For those who can’t armor their prop- arrived in 2012, it flooded parts of her father operated a railroad that carried erty against higher waters, the only other Dorchester, and in neighboring Somerset the Bay’s bounty to market. option is moving. That’s what Jim Brown County, it inundated almost all of Sandy “surprised a lot of people,” decided when the water began reaching Crisfield. As adjutant general of the James Adkins said, and served as a wake- the upper step in the home he shared Maryland National Guard, Adkins had up call to longtime lower-shore resi- with his girlfriend, Cynthia Thompson, the job of leading the Guard’s rescue dents. “We used to see loads of people near the Taylor’s Island campground. Now operation in Crisfield during a flood dis- who would come down here,” Mary they live in nearby Woolford — not high aster that drove 500 people to shelters Anne Adkins said. “I don’t see a lot of ground, but higher. and damaged 700 homes. people anymore.” Brown, a construction worker, came Born in Dorchester County, Adkins Asked how the counties can address to Maryland from North Carolina to grew up exploring the woods and nooks the one-two punch of rising waters and rebuild homes after Tropical Storm Isabel on Wroten Island, where his family came sinking land, Adkins was quiet. Then, he struck here in 2003. An avid fisherman, he from. The island is near Crapo and said, “Can you really stop nature?”

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 13 THE FUTURE OF BLACKWATER Scientists are working to save the marshes at a wildlife refuge that’s become a symbol for sea level rise

Daniel Strain

Signs of sea level rise, like these dying trees, can be seen in many locations around the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, located in lower Dorchester County, Maryland. PHOTO, DAVID HARP he observation deck at the how natural resource managers work edge of Lake Blackwater in the to conserve wetlands across the T Blackwater National Wildlife Chesapeake for decades to come. Refuge gives visitors a view of an ecosystem on the move. Matt Poster Child Whitbeck stands at the end of this Rick Abend first bought property in wooden walkway now. It stretches over lower Dorchester County not too far an expanse of green marsh grasses, put- from the Blackwater refuge in 1972. It ting tourists right in the middle of a started off as a weekend getaway spot vibrant wetland. Around the deck, you for Abend, who lived on the western can spy red-winged blackbirds, buzzing shore of Maryland. Now retired, the insects, and the occasional jumping 64-year-old owns and operates a tree fish. farm on this 106-acre plot near Whitbeck is a wildlife biologist at Madison, Maryland. MD the Blackwater refuge, which occupies Dorchester Blackwater National During his early years in lower County Wildlife Refuge (in yellow) around 28,000 acres of forests, marshes, Blackwater DE Dorchester, Abend, who likes to hunt, and water in Dorchester County on mainly had his eye on the region’s the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Today, Chesapeake abundant waterfowl. But he says that he’s interested in the transitions that living near the refuge gave him an VA VA are occurring across this landscape. Bay education in wetlands. Today, he serves Over the decades, Lake Blackwater — as president of the non-profit group which occupies around 4,000 acres at Friends of Blackwater. the center portion of the refuge — has “I was looking for ducks and geese. grown bigger and bigger, Whitbeck Blackwater Marsh Loss But now I’ve just seen so much more explains. And acres and acres with the egrets and herons,” 2010 that were once marshland 2100 Abend says. “[Blackwater] has have been covered in water, really opened up my eyes to killing off the plants there. what other things benefit But new marshes are from marshes.” forming here, too. Whitbeck There are currently points to a line of sickly around 9,000 acres of wet- looking loblolly pine trees in lands in the Blackwater the distance. Because of the refuge. These marshes are encroaching water, the area is home to an array of wildlife, now too salty for them, he as Abend suggests. But there explains. When those trees are other benefits to having Standing on an observation deck in the die, however, marsh plants will grow in Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, biologist these ecosystems around, scientists say. around them. Matt Whitbeck (above) looks out over acres of Marshes help to improve water quality “You can see, essentially, the habitat green marsh grasses. Today, the refuge is home in the Chesapeake Bay by trapping to bald eagles, red-winged blackbirds, and an nutrients and sediments flowing from transition in action. I mean, you can see array of other wildlife. But based on projections that line of dying trees. You can see the by scientists (visualizations, bottom) much of rivers toward the estuary. They can also marsh encroaching,” Whitbeck says. “It’s the marshland in and around the refuge (red protect shorelines from the crashing happening in front of our eyes.” and green) could become open water (blue) by waves generated by big storms. And they the end of the century. PHOTOS (OPPOSITE PAGE AND The driving force behind these transi- ABOVE), DAVID HARP; CHESAPEAKE BAY MAP, ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ are important nurseries for various com- tions is sea level rise — brought on by UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MAP LIBRARY; MAP OF BLACKWATER, U.S. FISH mercial fish species. manmade climate change and the sinking AND WILDLIFE SERVICE; VISUALIZATIONS, BLACKWATER 2100 TEAM But around the Bay, these natural of land surfaces around the Eastern Shore. communities are also in danger of drown- Rising waters have claimed more than marshes throughout Blackwater, which is ing. Scientists estimate that water levels in 5,000 acres of marshland in the refuge operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife the Chesapeake could rise by three feet or since it was established in the 1930s. Service. Their strategy will take advantage more by the end of this century. And That’s close to half of Blackwater’s his- of the ability of marshes to spread and that’s a problem for Blackwater. Under toric wetlands. move — just like you can see them doing that scenario, nearly all of Blackwater’s Whitbeck and others recently from the observation deck. The success or existing marshes could be underwater by launched a new effort to stem the loss of failure of this venture could influence 2100.

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 15 ably going down the Marshes have also moved away from the road that Blackwater water, farther inland. was at 50 or 60 years Moving inland will likely be crucial if ago.” marshes are going to survive rising sea Which makes it all level. As the water rises, the lowest-lying the more important marshes, or those closest to the Bay, will that scientists and natu- become submerged and die. Meanwhile, ral resource managers the Bay will move inland to dryer and discover how to help higher land. This influx of salty water will marshes here to survive kill off forests like the lines of loblolly the rising waters. pines near Lake Blackwater. Marshes, in turn, will replace those forests. Marsh Migration “The whole process has been going A tree farmer in Dorchester County, Rick Abend (above) says that flooding has killed off pine trees across the county. The trees can’t In 2013, Matt on for a long, long time,” Whitbeck says. handle the influx of salt water. Eventually, dead snags, like these pic- Whitbeck, the refuge “The marshes we have here are currently tured near Lake Blackwater in the Blackwater refuge (opposite page), biologist, helped to riddled with old tree stumps.” are the only reminder that areas that are now marshland were once write a report laying The Blackwater 2100 authors wanted healthy forests. “We’re just winding up with more and more open water all the time,” Abend says. PHOTO ABOVE, DAVID HARP; PHOTO OPPOSITE PAGE, out a plan for securing to find out where the wetlands that exist DANIEL STRAIN the long-term survival today in the Blackwater refuge could flee of marshes in and to in the future. To do that, the team The scale of the marsh loss here has around the Blackwater refuge. He co- employed computer simulations based on made Blackwater into what many con- authored the report, Blackwater 2100: A elevation data and projections about how sider a poster child for the toll of sea level Strategy For Salt Marsh Persistence In An Era fast the Bay’s waters are likely to rise. rise on the Bay. The refuge has certainly Of Climate Change, with Erik Meyers, vice In order to migrate successfully, and felt the effects of rising waters sooner than president of an Arlington, Virginia-based quickly, marshes need to have access to other wetland locations around the estu- conservation group called The Conser - wide-open landscapes free of obstacles — ary. One big reason is that in the 20th vation Fund, and David Curson, director obstacles like roads, towns, seawalls, and century, Blackwater was hit especially bad of bird conservation for the Maryland and even natural features like steep hills. by colonies of an invasive species of Washington, D.C., chapter of the National Ecologists and planners call such open rodent called nutria. These buck-toothed Audubon Society. spaces “migration corridors.”Two such animals have a voracious appetite and To save these wetlands, Whitbeck and corridors stuck out in the Blackwater 2100 stripped bare whole patches of wetlands his colleagues proposed moving beyond analysis. The first, around the Nanticoke in the region until they were eradicated traditional conservation strategies focused River at the east end of the Blackwater from the refuge about a decade ago. on protecting marshes in their current refuge, would be able to hold around Despite Blackwater’s early-bird status, locations. The Blackwater refuge, for 2,300 acres of marshes in 2100, the scientists are seeing indications that sea instance, installed a weir to reduce saltwa- authors estimated. The second, around level rise may be taking a toll on other ter flow into its marshes. Instead, natural Coursey Creek to the west, could hold wetlands around the Chesapeake as well. resource managers and others should around 3,600 acres. According to data from the Maryland work to help marshes to spread to new The hope is that by identifying these Department of Natural Resources, there locations in and around the refuge, the corridors, the refuge and conservation are currently around 187,000 acres of report said. groups can focus their resources on “irregularly flooded marsh” around the “Things are changing, and they’re preserving habitats in these areas. Many Maryland portion of the estuary.That’s a changing fast here on the refuge,” natural resource managers around the type of saltwater marsh that is common in Whitbeck says. “We’ve got to figure out country looking to preserve coastal Blackwater. The department estimates that how to work with these changes.” marshes elsewhere have jumped on the nearly 90 percent of those wetlands could One way is to help marshes to do same bandwagon. The thinking goes that vanish by 2100 because of sea level rise. what they have done for a long time. Sea you can preserve wetlands in a region Blackwater is “unique in a certain level in the region has gradually risen for simply by giving them the chance to sense. Things happen earlier there than in thousands of years, and geologic evidence move into open land. the rest of the Bay,” says Court Stevenson, collected from around the Bay shows that Scientists say this approach could help a wetland ecologist at the Horn Point marshes have responded in two ways. the marshes, but it also has its limits. One Laboratory of the University of Maryland They have grown upward by collecting of the biggest is that it’s not clear whether Center for Environmental Science. “But I enough sediment and decomposed plant wetlands will be able to migrate fast think other wetlands in the Bay are prob- matter to keep pace with the rising water. enough to keep ahead of current rates of

16 • Chesapeake Quarterly Under such easements, property owners, often Online Features: www. farmers, volunteer to limit chesapeakequarterly.net/sealevel the amount of development that can occur on their land. In return for these and other Low-Lying Communities conservation actions, the of Color at Risk state pays the landowners a lump sum, usually equal to Sea level rise places an about 40 to 60 percent of added burden on many the market value of their African-American com- munities in the Chesa - property. Proponents of Emily Will, Emily Will, MDS peake Bay region — areas sea level rise. Marshes “can adapt and have conservation easements argue that they’re that lie lower in both elevation and income adapted and built as sea level has risen a win-win: farmers can continue to work than do some of their affluent neighbors. since the last ice age,” says Andrew their land, while the state conserves Many of these towns are unincorporated, Baldwin, a wetland ecologist at the upland areas to which marshes may be limiting their access to resources like grants University of Maryland, College Park. “It’s able to migrate in the future as sea level for shoreline stabilization. more a question of can they deal with a rises. higher rate of sea level rise.” So far, the department has purchased Disappeared Islands No one has estimated how fast wet- only one easement, on a 221-acre prop- lands in Blackwater will be able to erty in lower Dorchester County. But In times gone by, people called these watery places migrate as the Bay’s waters rise. The other groups, including The Conservation home — Parker’s, Little Fund, have secured a large number of Blackwater 2100 team, however, acknowl- Watts, Sharps.These conservation easements around the edged in their report that marsh migra- Hanks family Courtesy, once-inhabited islands in tion may not be able to offset the full Blackwater refuge. In the Coursey Creek the Chesapeake Bay have disappeared brunt of sea level rise on the refuge. migration corridor, there are currently beneath the waves, victims of erosion, a Still, if only some marshes wind up around 812 acres of privately owned land natural force that is strengthened by the surviving to 2100, that’s still better than under easements. And there are many estuary’s rising water. Dozens of small none.The big challenge in protecting as more in the Nanticoke corridor: around islands like these were recorded in colonial many of these natural communities as 2,300 acres of land are protected by these times but do not appear on maps today. possible comes down to an old question agreements. in conservation: who owns the land? That’s still shy of the roughly 5,000 and wildlife do: there’s plenty of room acres that the Blackwater 2100 authors and not that many people. The big refuge Another Harvest highlighted as necessary to support future in the heart of the region helps to keep And it’s a tricky one. The Coursey Creek marsh habitat. The Conservation Fund, that way of life from disappearing, she migration corridor that Whitbeck’s team for its part, is pursuing opportunities to says. Lower Dorchester residents “don’t identified, for instance, stretches over increase those numbers by securing con- want building. They don’t want develop- 14,000 acres. Today, only 3,182 acres of servation easements and supporting other ment,” Hastings says. “Blackwater is a way that land are protected from development conservation methods, says Erik Meyers, a of keeping things rural.” in some fashion, although not all of these vice president with the organization. But Dorchester residents, like Rick acres will make good marsh habitat. The Because these efforts are just begin- Abend, are regularly reminded of the rest is mostly working farmland, where ning, it’s not clear how popular they will Bay’s encroachment on the marsh and marshes may not be welcome. be with Marylanders on the Eastern surrounding land. On the east end of the In order to address potential conflicts Shore and elsewhere. At the moment, farmer’s property, which is by the water, like these, the Maryland Department of residents of lower Dorchester County are new trees that he planted haven’t grown Natural Resources (DNR) is spearhead- happy to have the Blackwater refuge well — victims of the salt water that is ing an effort to protect marsh habitat into around, says Nancy Hastings. She’s a resi- creeping farther and farther inland. the future. The goal is to preserve land in dent of the town of Church Creek and When it comes to Abend’s crop, “I the most important migration corridors heads up a local volunteer effort called imagine I will cut it before the saltwater for marshes along Maryland’s coastline so the South Dorchester Good Neighbor gets it...but that’s going to be years from that if wetlands need to migrate, they will Project. now,” he says. “I’ve got plenty of time for face fewer obstacles. One of the key tools Hastings says that a large number of a couple more harvests.” in this program will be formal agreements her neighbors like living in Dorchester — [email protected] called conservation easements . for the same reason that wetland plants

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 17 THE THE STORM RESPONSE: How People OVER SURGES Are Adapting When Sandy Came to Crisfield

Michael W. Fincham

very September John Barnette water on three sides: the Wicomico River starts lifting all his crab traps out on the north, the Pocomoke on the E of the wide lower reaches of the south, and the Chesapeake Bay on the Wicomico River. He motors up to a west. Nine years earlier, he saw waters series of wire cages designed to catch rise six feet on a Tropical Storm Isabel summertime peeler crabs. Each cage is storm tide and submerge much of tall enough to stick up out of the water, Dorchester County just north of here. and raising them out of the river, an At each of his traps, Barnette has to annual autumn ritual, is hard work, best winch an empty cage up onto his small done when the temperatures are cooling boat and begin dismantling the nets and and the Chesapeake Bay is beginning to the net poles that run between the cage For those who live in low-lying turn clear and the blue crabs are heading and the river bank. Shouldering the areas, sea level rise doesn’t leave south. The white haze of summer is gone poles, he slogs back into the marshes a lot of options: abandon the and so are most of the late day thunder- where he stands his poles up and leans storms, but in 2012 he was keeping close them together. As he glides away from land or adapt to higher waters. track on weather forecasts. Autumn can each site, he can see the tops of his net Families deserted Holland Island bring large, late-season storms to the poles sticking up out of the tall marshes and Sharps Island and dozens of Chesapeake. like tentless teepees. other islands that now live on A waterman all his working life, By October, Barnette was dredging Barnette is a lean man in his mid 50s, oysters and checking in with members of only in memories and on old who has close-cropped hair, a strong jaw his rescue team. A tropical depression in maps. For those who would stay, line, and strong opinions about water the Caribbean was turning into a tropical there are some options: better safety.When he’s not catching peeler storm named Sandy. By the time it hit storm forecasts, better flood crabs and working his oyster leases, Jamaica, Sandy was a Category 1 hurri- Barnette heads up his county’s Swift cane, by the time it hit Cuba and Haiti, it preparation, and various old and Water Rescue Team, a group of volun- was a Category 2. As it moved north up new forms of flood control teers who try to save people from the Atlantic coast, NOAA meteorologists engineering. drowning, especially during storms and tried to define the structure of the storm: floods. One of his opinions is that even a Was it a hurricane? A tropical storm? A small hurricane could easily submerge post-tropical depression? A wintertime the lower third of his home county. low-pressure area? Or perhaps all of the Another is that sea level is rising and hur- above. ricanes may soon do even more damage By the time Sandy reached the around here. A largely flat, somewhat Chesapeake region, Barnette and his res- marshy slice of Maryland’s lower Eastern cue team had reason to relax. The storm PHOTO, DAVID HARP Shore, Somerset County is bracketed by was running north along the ocean side, staying well east of the Chesapeake Bay, a track that usually drives water out of the Bay.The Eastern Shore, it seemed, faced little threat from a storm surge. Sandy, of course, quickly became famous as a superstorm when it moved ashore up north in New Jersey. On October 29, it began pushing a historic storm surge through the state’s seashore towns and pouring water into the streets and subways and suburbs of New York City. Down south in tiny Mount Vernon, Maryland, an unexpected phone call came in to the volunteer fire depart- ment. Could Barnette bring his Swift Water Rescue Team down to Crisfield, Maryland? “We’ve got people who need to be rescued,” said the caller. “We’ve got flooding like we’ve never seen before.”

It’s not been the best of times for scien- tists trying to predict the worst of times. Around the Chesapeake Bay the worst of times are usually brought on by hurri- canes, tropical storms, and nor’easters. They bring high winds, power outages, and flooding — much of it from storm surges and storm tides, both of which will come in stronger and higher as a result of rising sea level. Over the last 20 years, scientists with the National Weather Service (NWS) have sharpened their predictions for hurricane tracks but not for hurricane intensity, says John Billet, science officer for the NWS Wakefield office. For storm surges, a spinoff of storm intensity, their forecast models have missed the mark during three recent hurricanes: Isabel in 2003, Irene in 2011, and Sandy in 2012. What’s missing from their models? To predict the risk and reach of hurricane John Barnette (red jacket) leads the Somerset County Swift Water Rescue Team into storm surges, research scientists test out the flooded streets of Crisfield during Superstorm various experimental models and federal Sandy in 2012. Working with a small jon boat forecasters run operational models, and the big trucks of the Maryland National Guard, the team brought out residents trapped by dozens of models every day, using super- the floods unleashed by the storm surge. PHOTO OF computers to crunch data — a lot of CRISFIELD, COURTESY OF SALISBURY NEWS, SBYNEWS.COM; INSET data. The numbers come from buoys and PHOTO, COURTESY OF THE SOMERSET COUNTY SWIFT WATER balloons and aircraft, from ships and RESCUE TEAM satellites, and they record air pressure, wind fields, wave actions, tidal levels, and temperature swings in both the atmos- phere and the ocean. Stuffed with data

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 19 and interlaced with equa- 2012, on the other hand, tions, the models are sup- were east-side storms. That’s posed to suggest where usually a less damaging storm surges will hit and storm pattern, but forecasts how bad the flooding will for their storm surges also be. proved problematic. The The results, however, storm surge height during have been uneven. In their Irene fell 50 percent below post-storm review, the model predictions, says National Weather Service Boicourt — but the storm found that the storm surge surge during Sandy swept in from Isabel in 2003 ran one at 15 percent above predic- to three feet higher in the tions. Storms passing to the Chesapeake than the fore- east usually drive water cast, especially in the down the Bay, and Sandy northern Bay. Its forecasts seemed no exception — at for Irene and Sandy were first. As Sandy passed by off even more. They over- Maryland, water levels began predicted the surge for dropping in Baltimore and Irene, and for Sandy they Better forecasts for hurricane storm intensity is the focus for Bill Annapolis and along the underpredicted how much Boicourt, an oceanographer with the University of Maryland Center for Environ- western shore of the Bay. water would sweep into mental Science. PHOTO, DAVID HARP; MAP BELOW, ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MAP LIBRARY But unexpectedly they Crisfield. began rising along the lower The science community learned a lot Eastern Shore, especially in Crisfield. MD from those storms, says Bill Boicourt, a It was an embarrassing moment for physical oceanographer with the DE forecasters. The National Weather Service Chesapeake University of Maryland Center for MD was predicting a two-to-four foot surge Chesapeake Bay Environmental Science who works Crisfield for the lower Chesapeake but a five-foot VA closely with forecasters with the National VA Bay surge was rolling into Crisfield. “We Weather Service. “That’s another way of didn’t expect that much to come across saying we blew the forecasts.” [the Bay],” says Billet, the NWS meteorol- Predictions about storm surges in the ogist. As the storm approached, Boicourt, Chesapeake usually begin with some the academic oceanographer, was getting basic physics about hurricanes and some questions about possible flooding. “I told basic geography about the Bay: hurricanes people not to worry about Sandy,” says are tropical cyclones, large low-pressure by this legendary storm of the century. Boicourt. “I was wrong.” systems that spin with a counterclockwise The 1933 hurricane entered the rotation, creating high winds and carrying Chesapeake during the high point of a John Barnette was not feeling well pre- heavy rains; the Bay is a long, narrow line strong spring tide, a collusion that helped pared about Crisfield. When the call for of water running north and south. create huge storm tides and surges and help came in, he met up with three team Hurricanes moving up along the east side extensive flooding. Isabel, however, members of the Swift Water Rescue Team of the Chesapeake usually drive water entered the Bay region on a much down at the Mount Vernon Fire southwards down the Bay. Storms moving weaker neap high tide, but it still man- Department. They hooked the 15-foot along the west side drive water north- aged to hit many of the high-water marks jon boat to the back of the big Chevrolet wards up the Bay.West-side hurricanes from 1933. Sea level, as measured at SUV and set off under low, wet clouds are much less frequent than east-side Hampton Roads, had risen 1.35 feet in for the windy 25-mile drive down rain- storms, but they do much more damage. the region in 70 years. Isabel’s storm surge slick roads. “Isabel was a surprise,” says Boicourt, flooded large tracts of Maryland’s Eastern His team, in his opinion, was well- in part because it was the first major Shore and drove waist-high water into trained but poorly equipped. It was that storm in decades that tracked to the west the downtown streets of Annapolis, little flat-bottomed jon boat that bugged of the Bay. It arrived in 2003, 70 years Baltimore, Alexandria, and Washington, Barnette. Some inflatable Zodiacs, big, after the great August Hurricane of 1933, D.C. buoyant, and better balanced would be and it nearly matched the damage done Both Irene in 2011 and Sandy in helpful. When a county official, nervous

20 • Chesapeake Quarterly about the approach of Sandy, asked wind” from Sandy.When the what gear he needed, Barnette eye of the storm moved ashore told him, “It’s too late, we can’t go in New Jersey, the size of its to Walmart and get it.” rotating cyclone was so large that Driving into Crisfield, his team the winds circling along its outer saw trees down, power lines down, rim reached south all the way a cemetery buried in gray water, down to Maryland. The bottom its white gravestones sticking up in curve of Sandy’s cyclone sent the flood like soldiers standing at northwest winds blowing attention. Water in the streets: straight down the long reach of ankle deep in places, knee deep, the Potomac River. Those winds waist deep. Cars with water over pushed water out of the river, their hoods, homes turned into shoving it eastward across the islands. They found other rescue Bay towards Crisfield. teams already working the flood: The result, said Boicourt, was One group drove all night from a “cross-bay setup,” a slope in South Carolina, hauling Zodiacs water levels with the high side “Sandy was a watershed event,” says crabber and oysterman and a trailer full of extra equip- John Barnette, who headed up the Somerset County rescue team that on the eastern side of the Bay. ment; the state police and the responded to the flooding of Crisfield in 2012. PHOTO, MICHAEL W. FINCHAM This kind of setup was unusual, marine police were there, and the but it was probably not a one- Maryland National Guard had rumbled were camped around a quadrangle of time event. When Boicourt went further into town with Humvees and trucks, long tables, settled behind their laptops, back, looking at the data and models for most of them big, five-tonners. A city trying to come up with new projections Hurricane Irene, a much smaller, east-side official gave Barnette and his team a list for future sea level rise. There were storm that hit a year earlier, he got of names and addresses, people to be res- PowerPoint presentations, and catered another surprise: “Sure enough,” he says, cued. The list was two pages long. lunches, and for the oceanographers in “there was a bulge on the eastern side of Barnette drove into the flood as far he the room, there were those questions the Bay for that hurricane also.” A small could, then launched the jon boat and about Crisfield. With sea level rising, bulge that was easy to overlook — for a tied it behind a big five-ton National accuracy in storm surge forecasting was small storm. Guard truck. Wading down Somerset going to become even more critical in It sounds like a simple answer, almost Avenue, Barnette and his team began the near future. too simple: wind drove the surge across working the list, sloshing up to doorways The answer also came politely. “I’m the Bay. But getting good data on wind and porches, loading people into the boat going to be very careful about this,” said energy, understanding its effect on water and ferrying them two at a time back to Boicourt. In the days after Sandy had fin- energy, and getting the data into models the Guard’s big truck. With a Zodiac, ished with Crisfield, he had gone back are not simple tasks. “We don’t know Barnette thought, they could be ferrying through the data and the storm surge how to translate accurately the wind-as- six adults each run. When the rising models. With water levels dropping on measured-over-water into actual stress water reached the truck’s exhaust pipe, the western shore, why did a five-foot delivered to the wavy surface,” said the driver put on the brakes, turning the storm surge roll east through Crisfield? Boicourt. “That’s still a fuzzy thing.” big brown truck into another island in It’s an important question in an era of ris- the stream. The rescue team kept wading ing sea level: this historic fishing town, Working the flooded streets of Crisfield through the streets in their bright yellow once the second largest city in Maryland, in the fading light, John Barnette watched rain suits, ferrying people through the sits at the narrow end of a skinny penin- a National Guard truck back up and darkening water as the wet gray light sula surrounded by water on three sides. impale itself atop a fire hydrant hidden began to wane. With many of its streets sitting less than below the flood waters. The broken three feet above current sea level, the hydrant began draining the town water Six months after Sandy, the question place barely sticks above the waters of the supply, the Guard began sending other came politely to Bill Boicourt: “Am I Bay. trucks to offload the evacuees from the right in saying that the models for Super- In his search through the storm data, truck, and Barnette kept his rescue team storm Sandy in the Chesapeake failed to Boicourt found what he was looking for: working. predict the inundation of Crisfield?” an explanation for an unexpected east- With winds gusting to 90 miles per The occasion was a day-long confer- ward surge of water. The prime mover, hour, with trees still falling, with the light ence. Eleven scientists from five states Boicourt said, was “the wrap-around finally gone, all the teams were called in

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 21 by 7:30. Barnette’s group, by some more data, the right his estimate, brought out data taken at the right time, almost 40 people. More than feed it into their models, and 200 people had been carried this time they can get every- out in all. They were trucked thing right. They can churn to a Red Cross shelter 20 out more accurate forecasts miles up the road in Princess for storm intensity and Anne. By the end of the day storm surges. the shelter held 500 people, There’s also hope, hope most of them driven out of that more accurate forecasts their homes by power outages will help communities pre- and by a storm surge that ran pare for the stronger storm stronger than anyone surges that can come in the expected. near future. Crisfield is still there at the end of a skinny Were there lessons from The flooding of Crisfield highlighted the need for well-trained and peninsula, and it still sits well-equipped first responders based in Somerset County. The work of the Sandy? When predictive mod- county’s swift water rescue team led to fast funding for two large new Zodiacs, barely above sea level. And els fall short in their forecasts new dry suits and additional training. PHOTO, COURTESY OF THE SOMERSET COUNTY SWIFT sea level keeps rising. about storm intensity, com- WATER RESCUE TEAM munities like Crisfield have to There were also lessons scramble to find help and evacuate peo- described the storm surges from Irene learned at the local level. Two months ple. And scientists have to scramble to and Sandy. after the Crisfield flood, John Barnette got answer questions. What data were missing How do you get water temperatures new boats for the rescue team, two from their models? during hurricanes? Boicourt and his col- Zodiacs big enough to carry eight people Nearly two years after Sandy, Bill laborators have a plan: when a hurricane at a time. The funding started with an Boicourt was trying to line up small arrival is seven days away from the Mid- unexpected call, this one from the boats during the summer of 2014, hoping Atlantic, they will go into heavy watch Maryland Emergency Management for some hurricane action along the mode. At four days out, Boicourt and his Agency. What did the water rescue team Mid-Atlantic. He wanted to measure crews will load their boats, then head out need? The team got new boats, new train- water temperatures in the ocean in the of Ocean City,Wachapreague, and ing, new members, and new, bright red middle of a hurricane. Boats in the 25- Virginia Beach. Four to five miles off- dry suits for all the volunteers. to-40-foot range might do the job: they shore, they’ll unload into the water a “It’s inevitable it’s going to repeat were small enough to rent cheaply, big “light buoy,” a 300-pounder that can itself,” says Barnette, still a man with enough to carry some expensive research measure temperature, salinity, and wave strong opinions about the Crisfield flood. gear, fast enough to get back to port in a action and radio the data back to shore “The sea level is rising here at a rate faster hurry. during the storm’s passage. In one site, than it is anywhere else in the world, it Some of the missing data were real- probably Wachapreague, they’ll also seems. And the intensity of the storms time temperatures from real-world hurri- launch an underwater glider, a torpedo- will only get worse. But the biggest canes: the right numbers for water tem- shaped tube that can capture subsurface tragedy of all will be if we fail to learn peratures, numbers taken at different lev- temperatures as it goes. “Then we’ll get from it.” els, both surface and subsurface, and at the hell out of there,” says Boicourt. In November he motored out on the different times during a storm’s progress. Other oceanographers will be unload- Wicomico, headed out to dredge oysters, According to an analysis published by 48 ing buoys and launching gliders in and found the tall green marshes lying flat researchers, the NWS forecasts for Irene Massachusetts and along the south Jersey along both sides of the river, as flat and and Sandy did not include the right data shore. Like most contemporary oceanog- bald as his backyard after the snow melts. about a subsurface layer of cold water. raphy, this is a collaborative project with There weren’t enough trees or bushes left The shifts in that cold water pool, they researchers working at the University of for a bird to perch on. And his net poles said, played a role in weakening Irene and Maine, the Woods Hole Oceanographic were gone, his tepees washed away in the strengthening Sandy.When scientists Institution, Rutgers University, and the flood. Sometime later he’d have to tramp went back later and inserted the right University of Maryland. into the winter woods and cut new poles. numbers in the widely used Weather There’s excitement about the project, He’d need them come spring to get ready Research and Forecasting Model (WRF), at least among oceanographers. And there for his summertime crabbing. the model suddenly clicked: it accurately is faith, the faith of the scientist: dig up — [email protected]

22 • Chesapeake Quarterly Engineers test out a new, removable flood wall designed to protect downtown Washington, D.C., from waters unleashed by a once-in-a- 100-year storm event. The post-and-panel structure will go up on 17th Street whenever a major flood threatens and come down when the threat subsides . PHOTO, MICHAEL W. FINCHAM A FLOOD WALL AGAINST THE FUTURE If Katrina Came to Washington

Michael W. Fincham

s dawn broke in Washington, Mall: a flood wall that is supposed to elaborate levee system, letting rivers of sea D.C., a large tractor-trailer protect the nation’s capital from the water pour through the gaps and inun- A groaned to a stop on 17th Street fiercer floods the future may bring. date streets and neighborhoods, homes just below the Washington Monument, a The nation’s capital is not New and businesses. The result was a civic looming orange pillar in the early morn- Orleans, but the hurricane that over- catastrophe — and a signal. According to ing light. Men in green work vests and whelmed that Gulf Coast city raised recent forecasts for global warming, the white hard hats began setting up red alarms in Washington, D.C., and in many future will bring rising sea level, more cones and waving traffic around the other riverside and coastal cities. When intense hurricanes along the North truck. On its long, open flatbed sat an Katrina hit New Orleans, its storm surge Atlantic, and stronger storm surges, a tri- odd new monument for the National broke through weak points in the city’s fecta that carries expensive penalties for

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 23 poorly prepared communities. the Corps. Between the posts, Downtown Washington, D.C., panels will be slotted on top could be vulnerable to major of each other log-cabin style, flooding from the Potomac raising a barrier that was sup- River. posed to stand three panels With Katrina invading New high and nine feet tall and Orleans in 2005 and Sandy stretch across the street and surging into New York City in both its sidewalks. The barrier 2012, American planners are also had to connect with two looking at engineering solu- new concrete walls: one on tions that once seemed too far- the east side of the street, one fetched, too expensive, too on the west. Curving grace- European. The Brits had built fully out of the ground, each floodgates across the Thames wall ends abruptly in mid-air, River in hopes of protecting looking like a misplaced ski London. And the Dutch had jump. The walls will connect spent several decades building the street-level barrier into the massive Deltaworks project, Workmen from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) the higher ground, tying this use sandbags to build an emergency levee against the Great Spring Flood of a series of dams, dykes, locks, 1936 in Washington, D.C., the event that led Congress to order the whole exotic structure into and levees that stretched across building of a permanent levee along the National Mall. PHOTO, DEPARTMENT the familiar landscape of the the mouths of several estuaries OF THE INTERIOR National Mall. in the Netherlands. In New Today would be a test York, planners are now discussing a surge Akima Construction, the general contrac- fitting for just the ground-level panels, barrier across the Verrazano Narrows. And tor, and for Waynesboro Alloy Works, one the sections that have to fit the curve of in Virginia, scientists recently began run- of the chief subcontractors. the street and the angle of the sidewalks. ning computer modeling studies to test Everybody had good reason to be If this daytime fitting doesn’t go well, the the pros and cons of a giant floodgate attentive: the new flood wall, in its final panels will go back to the shop, and the across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. form, would include 35 very heavy pieces next test, a full test, will probably happen Along the banks of the tidal Potomac, of metal. As the engineers checked their at night. “It’s probably a good time to planning agencies took one clear lesson clipboards, a work crew began hooking install it in the middle of the night,” says from Katrina: look to your levees. Most and swinging and lowering onto the Vidal, “because floods always happen visitors to Washington, D.C. — and most street some large, carefully numbered right in the middle of the night, when natives — don’t know the National Mall metal posts and panels. The entire wall you can’t see, and it’s cold and wet.” already has a flood-control levee, a low- would include eight metal posts weighing lying, park-like ridge that runs along the in at 1,200 pounds each, and 27 alu- How was the 17th-Street gap closed dur- north flank of the Reflecting Pool. Those minum panels tipping the scales at 800 ing past floods? “Sandbags,” says Amy who do know about the levee also know pounds each. Tarce of the National Capital Planning that it has a major gap: the busy 17th All the parts were numbered because Commission. “If you google ‘floods in Street roadway that crosses the Mall just they had to be plugged together in the D.C.,’ you’ll see historic photos of people west of the Washington Monument. That right order and in the right place. Think in the middle of the night stacking sand- gap gives morning rush hour traffic a of putting together Ikea’s largest wall cab- bags.”They were the solution du jour shortcut across the Mall and an entryway inet or the world’s largest Lego toy, then during three great floods of the 20th into downtown D.C. It also gives flood magnify the process by several orders of century: 1936, 1942, and 1972. waters from the Potomac a gateway into magnitude. Heavy manhole covers had to It was that 1936 flood that gave birth the city. be lifted off the roadway, metal posts had to the idea of a levee along the National To test out a stopgap, the white hard to be lowered down those manholes Mall. “The Great Spring Flood” not only hats began unloading the flood wall, sockets, aluminum panels had to be slot- inundated low-lying sections of the city, piece by piece, working with a cranelike ted between the posts. it also inspired Congress to order the forklift. None of the Saturday morning It’s been called a flood wall, a flood- Corps of Engineers into action. The joggers or bus tours stopped to watch, gate, a post-and-panel wall, but the tech- engineers quickly built a new levee, a but a number of engineers were paying nical term for the design would be “a concrete wall that ran ruler-straight close attention. They were working for stop-log closure structure,” says Tony between the high ground of the Lincoln the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for Vidal, chief engineer for the project for Memorial and the higher ground of the

24 • Chesapeake Quarterly Washington Monument. The engineers finished the wall by 1939 and in later years tore parts of it down and replaced it with the long, grassy embankment that now flanks the Reflecting Pool. According to Vidal, parts of the old wall are buried under the grass. The gap at 17th Street, however, was left as a perma- An artist’s sketch shows an early version of the 17th-Street flood wall (left). The photo nent roadway, a breach to be sandbagged above shows an example of how a “post-and-panel” flood wall would be erected. The Washington wall will have nine posts and 27 panels, all of them stored off-site. When a major flood event threat- during flood times. ens the city, they would be trucked to 17th Street and craned into place. DRAWING AND PHOTO, COURTESY OF It was Katrina that killed off the sand- THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS bag solution. After the failures in New Orleans, the Federal Emergency Administration (FEMA) ordered the stairs and escalators to disable the city’s According to Vidal, “The only thing that Corps to re-evaluate levees around the subway system. The city needed a better really got this thing finally built, I hate to country, and the National Mall levee got stopgap than sandbags. say, was Katrina.” a failing grade. There was that large gap at When the Corps failed the levee, There’s a lesson there about the prob- 17th Street and a low point at 23rd Street FEMA unleashed a storm of its own. It lem of flood control in Washington, D.C., near the Lincoln Memorial. Sandbags drew up a new map for the 100-year according to Ed Link, a senior research would no longer suffice: they could top- floodplain, labeling many dry-land areas engineer at the University of Maryland ple during a big storm. “The word they as floodable areas and automatically rais- who used to work for the Corps as “chief used was ‘unacceptable,’” says Tarce. ing the threat of higher insurance rates geek” or director of research. When many “That’s their technical term for saying the under the rules of the National Flood agencies are in charge, no one is in levee doesn’t meet their criteria for a Insurance Program. “There was a big charge. 100-year event.” uproar from the District,” says Tarce of The gap at 17th Street, under this the National Capital Planning Commis - Another, more sobering, lesson: once-in-a-100-year-flood scenario, would sion. The city government asked FEMA Washington’s new stopgap wall, when let river waters from the Potomac surge to postpone issuing the map, and FEMA finally in place on 17th Street, cannot be up the road, take a right turn just past the agreed, exacting a promise that the city a final solution to flood risks facing the Washington Monument, and flow east would fix the levee by November 2009. nation’s capital. That lesson comes from down Constitution Avenue, spreading out It would, however, take six years to fix Link and his colleague George Galloway, to swamp an impressive list of federal a levee that was originally built in two. a research engineer from the University buildings. At risk under various high- Five options for the wall were designed of Maryland who collaborated on studies water scenarios would be the Justice and debated, and all of them had to work of Katrina and Sandy. Department, the Commerce Department, their way through 11 city and federal A nine-foot flood wall designed for a the IRS headquarters, the Smithsonian’s departments, including agencies as diverse 100-year storm may not be enough to national museums of natural history and as the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts and hold back future floods. According to American history, the National Archives, the D.C. Historic Preservation Office. Galloway,Washington, D.C., could be even the National Gallery of Art. River Then the principal contractor had to be walloped by a one-two punch: rainstorm waters could also pour down vents and fired, and another had to be hired. flood waters rushing downriver out of

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 25 In the Netherlands, a giant storm surge out of the North Sea could inundate half the country. “They say they cannot afford to let it happen,” says Galloway.

How does a city prepare for a disas- ter it can’t define simply or predict? How does a state? A country? By a planning approach that recognizes the limits of planning. By predic- tions that recognize the limits of predictions. Those paradoxes lie at the heart of what Link and Galloway are preaching as a result of their analyses of Katrina and Sandy and other great flood disas- The disastrous North Sea Flood of 1953 spurred the government of the Netherlands to start work on ters. “I need to be worried about the Deltaworks Project, a series of dams, dikes, sluices, locks, and levees to protect against another catastro - these uncertainties,” says Link, phic storm surge. The Oosterscheldekering storm surge barrier (shown above) is the largest structure in the “about these things that I don’t system , stretching nine kilometers and including sluice gates that are only closed during flood threats. A plaque on the structure reads: “Here the tide is ruled by the wind, the moon, and us (the Dutch).” PHOTO, know I don’t know.” Flood control VLADIMIR ŠIMAN engineers talk like philosophers because they don’t want to look the Potomac watershed and a hurricane things, and those weird things are the like generals who keep preparing to fight storm surge driving upriver on a high ones that cause the most problems.” the last war rather than the next one. tide. The result could be a 500-year You see the dilemma: does a city like The answer, says Link, is to apply cer- flood that would turn Constitution Washington protect itself against the tain key principles, and one of them is Avenue into a river running 10 to 12 storm we think we can predict, the 100- ongoing adaptation. “Everything has to feet deep. An even larger storm could do year or 500-year event? Or does it plan be built to allow additional options,” he worse. “A Category 4 storm being something more ambitious, an engineer- says. “Every time you take step one and pushed up the river at a time when the ing solution that protects against the two, you are anticipating needing to take river is high would be a disaster,” says weird monster that may never arrive? steps three and four.” You may not know Galloway. According to his calculations, It’s an existential dilemma for plan- yet what those next steps would be, but flood levels would run 16 feet along the ning officials all along the Mid-Atlantic “you make sure that step two isn’t the avenue. whether they are debating a flood wall last thing you can do.” High waters could also be coming for Washington, D.C., a giant surge bar- A taller flood wall at 17th Street, for from bizarre storms, odd events that rier across the harbor of New York City, example, shouldn’t be the last step in don’t fit our conventional definitions. a giant barrier across the mouth of the protecting Washington. “I am not sug- “We have these stereotypical conceptual- Chesapeake Bay, or seawalls for small gesting that we need a 20-foot wall or a izations of storms,” says Link. “They are endangered islands like Smith and 30-foot wall surrounding downtown based on homogenous databases of hur- Tangier that are now slowly dwindling Washington,” says Galloway, who points ricanes and river storms and nor’easters.” away in the middle of the Chesapeake to other options. Structures in the flood But not all storms fit these categories. Bay. zone could be individually prepped: sub- “Sandy was an aberration,” says Link. “It Prepare for the predictable or for the way vents can be shielded, generators was this hybrid, it didn’t behave like a nightmare monster? “I’ll give you what and electrical boxes can be moved to the hurricane, it didn’t behave like a my Dutch friends say,” says Galloway. “It upper floors of buildings. “You might nor’easter, it behaved like a monster.” is much better for us as a nation to pre- have mud,” he says, “but you can still How do we do forecasts for these pare for the totally giant event than it is operate the buildings a day and a half hybrid monsters? And how do we plan to try and recover in our country from a later. It’s flood-risk reduction, not flood for them, especially in an era of rising sea flood.” The United States, of course, is prevention.” Prepping infrastructure and level? “Statistically we are in Never- not the Netherlands, where the govern- training staff could reduce the impact of Never Land,” says Link. “We don’t have ment has built dams and dikes and barri- large, unexpected floods. good statistics for those kinds of weird ers across the mouths of several estuaries. “In D.C. we are plugging up the big

26 • Chesapeake Quarterly holes and we are paying attention to the things that are most obvious and near- Online Features: www. chesapeakequarterly.net/sealevel term important,” says Link, who collabo- rates closely with Galloway as part of an informal group of engineering Are New Policies Needed to Meet the Challenge? researchers from three area universities. overnments at all levels — federal, The group’s job, however, is to look state, and local — should provide beyond the near term, to identify long- G more effective and coordinated range risk, and to figure out adaptation leadership to address the risks of increased strategies for the city for the next three coastal flooding worsened by sea level rise, or four decades. On the other hand, the experts say. Municipalities now compete in a Dutch, according to Galloway, are work- free-for-all for limited federal funding to ing on their 10,000-year plan. harden coastlines. Some policy makers want to reduce existing incentives, like the federal flood insurance program, that encour- By early afternoon, the test was finished. age private landowners and municipalities to build near the water’s edge. The crew slid all the clanging manhole covers back into place and fork-lifted all Early Warnings from Smith and Tangier Islands the posts and panels back on the truck. Sea level rise may seem like a distant prospect, but an alarm has The street was clear, open once again to been sounding in two small, historic communities sitting miles traffic and to flooding. And the panels out in the Chesapeake, surrounded by water. Smith Island in were headed back to Waynesboro, Maryland and Tangier Island in Virginia have endured heavy Virginia, for yet more tweaking. flooding from storms and lost land and population as their The wall could pass its final test shorelines have steadily eroded. Both communities have desperately searched for sometime late this year. Then all its engineering solutions and funding to keep their localities from being drowned. moveable pieces will be trucked off to storage, waiting for years, even decades, Norfolk at the Leading Edge for the next great spring flood or hurri- cane storm surge or hybrid storm event. The Norfolk, Virginia, metropolitan area is another place in the When one of those monsters arrives, Chesapeake region where coastal flooding exacerbated by sea police cars with whirling red and blue level rise is increasingly common and too obvious for city lead- ers and residents to ignore. To cope with the rising water, the flashers will block off 17th Street, the city developed a $300-million list of projects to fortify seawalls, National Park Service will haul the wall replenish beaches, and create natural shoreline buffers. The U.S. Navy is also taking out of storage, big trucks will rumble steps to adapt its base at Norfolk, the world’s largest naval headquarters. down Constitution Avenue, the forklift crane will swing into action again. And some people will hold their Living Shorelines: An Alternative to Armor breath. There’s Murphy’s Law to worry As rising seas increase erosion along Maryland’s coasts, the tradi- about, says Galloway. Some cities have tional response has been to harden them with steel and rock. misplaced their flood barriers. Others Now the state is requiring waterfront property owners to con- have not gotten them up in time. Let’s sider a natural alternative — constructing “living shorelines” of hope the guys who know where the wetland plants that attenuate wave energy. The success of these pieces are stored are not on leave and the shorelines depends on proper siting and design. And questions remain about guys who remember how the pieces go whether these engineered projects will perform effectively over the long term. together are not retired. The new flood barrier is essential, Bringing Sand to the Beach says Galloway, but it may not be enough for an era when sea level is rising. “We’ve The risk of increased coastal flooding means that beach replen- been lulled into this false sense of secu- ishment projects may become more important to seaside rity that if you have a 100-year flood communities . Ocean City, Maryland, and Virginia Beach already protection, then okay, we’re safe,” he says. rely on these projects to sustain their tourism-driven economies. But as supplies of offshore sand used for these projects become “The Dutch just laugh at us when we scarcer, and competition for federal funding increases, will there come a point when say that.” rebuilding beaches becomes untenable economically and politically? — [email protected] PHOTOS ABOVE, DAVID HARP

Volume 13, Numbers 2 & 3 • 27 Non-Profit Org. U.S.Postage PAID Permit No. 04386 Maryland Sea Grant College College Park, MD 4321 Hartwick Road, Suite 300 University System of Maryland College Park, Maryland 20740

Address Service Requested

Chesapeake Quarterly is printed on recycled paper, processed chlorine free, using soy-based inks

For More Information on Sea Level Rise

Studying the Causes of Sea Level • Climate Change in Maryland, Rise and Projected Increases Maryland Department of Natural Resources, http://www.dnr.state. Sea Level Rise Viewers • Updating Maryland’s Sea-Level md.us/climatechange/ – Learn about Several websites Rise Projections, Scientific and other ways that the state of Mary land allow users to see 10 9 Technical Working Group, Maryland is working to adapt to the effects of 8 for themselves the 7 Climate Change Commission, sea level rise and other aspects of cli- 6 simulated effects of 5 http://ian.umces.edu/pdfs/ian_report 4 mate change. Provides links to tips on differing amounts 3 2 _413.pdf – This 2013 report how people can help in their every- 1 of sea level rise at WATER LEVEL describes causes and projections of day lives, like conserving electricity the neighborhood in feet sea level rise in the Chesapeake Bay and water. level around the Chesapeake Bay. Here are some of through 2100. See a video and these viewers and their features: article summarizing this study: Floodplain Maps and Federal http://www.mdsg.umd. edu/news/ Flood Insurance • Climate Central: Surging Seas, http://sealevel. scientists-unveil-new-projections - climatecentral .org/ssrf/maryland – Pick a level of sea-level-rise-maryland • Maryland Digital Flood Insur ance sea level rise (up to 10 feet), and you can see the • Recurrent Flooding Study for Rate Maps (DFIRM), http:// numbers of people, houses, and acres in towns and Tidewater Virginia, Virginia mdfloodmaps .com – Coastal flood- cities that would be inundated . This viewer also Institute of Marine Science, ing, which is worsened by sea level plots the locations of schools and hospitals; identi- http://ccrm.vims.edu/recurrent_ rise, has led the federal government fies the income and ethnic makeup of people in flooding/Recurrent_Flooding_ to update floodplain maps in the areas affected; and shows ranges of property Study_web.pdf Maryland and other states. The value (by acre), among other information. redrawn maps have included some • NOAA Viewer, http://coast.noaa.gov/ Planning for Sea Level Rise homeowners within floodplains who digitalcoast /tools/slr – See photos of various previously were outside — and as a landmarks as they would look under higher • CoastSmart Communities, result, may be required to purchase water. The simulation illustrates the loss of Maryland Department of Natural flood insurance for the first time. marshes as they are flooded. Resources, http://dnr.maryland.gov/ However, property owners may be • Coastal Atlas, Maryland Department of CoastSmart/resourcecenter.asp – This eligible to save money on premiums Natural Resources, state program works to help home- through the National Flood Insur - http://dnr.maryland.gov/ccs/coastalatlas/ owners and coastal communities plan ance Program if they obtain policies shorelines .asp – This site provides multiple layers for coastal flooding and sea level rise. through the program before new of information about coastal hazards suitable for The website includes, for example , floodplain maps take effect. This planning purposes. These include 100-year flood a fact sheet about elevating houses to website has an online tool that allows plains and areas suitable for building living avoid flooding and lower flood users to understand their flood risk shorelines to reduce erosion. insurance premiums. and choices.

To see online articles and to send us your comments, scan the code at left or go to www.chesapeakequarterly.net A Maryland Sea Grant publication • www.mdsg.umd.edu • Follow us on Facebook and Twitter