To Be Fair, They Don't Need a Lot of Road Money

Tangier Island prepares for long-awaited jetty construction

Tangier Island is getting some state and federal help in its long-running battle against the Chesapeake Bay’s punishing waves. But officials said that it won’t be much help with a larger problem: sea level rise.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Virginia Marine Resources Commission announced in late September an agreement to construct a nearly 500-foot-long stone jetty just off the island’s western shore.

The $2.6 million project is designed to keep the community’s navigational channel open and protect its commercial harbor from waves and future storm surges, said Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Matthew Strickler.

That seems like a reasonable investment.

“They’ve got some significant challenges with their harbor from a safety perspective, and there’s some shoaling with sediment getting in,” he said. “It’s not protected from some of the winds, so the jetty will be a buffer for that and improve access.”

The agreement paves the way for design work and construction to begin later this year and be completed in 2019, officials said. The federal government is shouldering 80 percent of the cost; the state is picking up the rest.

Tangier Island’s economy is closely tied to the water. Its shores are lined with docks, deadrise work boats and “shedding houses,” shacks used for processing soft crabs.

“A clear and open navigation channel is key for public safety and for the local economy, which counts the Chesapeake Bay and tourism among its central assets,” Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement.

At 3 mm per year, Tangier Island's problem is not sea level rise, but rather erosion. Unprotected, the soft peaty sediments that form these islands is extremely susceptible to erosion from the sides. The islands themselves can grow upward with fresh peat from salt-marsh, if the salt marsh is not covered with hard surface, like a road or a house. Even beaches can grow upward. It's interesting that their problem is that the Bay is getting shallower, and not deeper, which would be the case if rising sea level were the primary problem.