When a 2-foot chunk of shoreline washed away from their waterfront property in Portsmouth, VA, the Berners decided it was time to prevent further erosion at their home of 15 years.
At the behest of their college student son, Christian, they turned to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Elizabeth River Project for help. Last summer, squads of volunteers showed up to build a 718-foot “living shoreline,” spreading 400 tons of sand, placing 2,400 concrete oyster “castles” and planting 2,500 plugs of marsh grasses.
“In three years, hopefully, our shoreline will be covered in oysters,” said Christian Berner. He’s already seen great blue herons and night herons perching on the castles intended to attract juvenile oysters. “I’m excited to see over the years how this creek becomes a more healthy estuary.”
The Berners’ is among a growing number of nature-based shoreline stabilization projects being installed around the Bay.
Such living shorelines use native vegetation, often in combination with low rock sills just offshore, to create a waterfront marsh and protect it from wind-driven waves.It didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t cheap. The pandemic caused delays, and even with a lot of volunteer labor, the project cost nearly $90,000. Fortunately, a grant from the Virgina Environmental Endowment covered 75% of that, while the Chesapeake Oyster Alliance, a Bay Foundation initiative, kicked in $10,000. Berner said the family’s share was only about $12,000. Without the financial help, it wouldn’t have happened, he said.
Therein lies the promise and challenge of living shorelines. Studies show they provide important shallow-water habitat for fish, crabs, birds and other wildlife. By curbing erosion, they protect property and reduce water-fouling sediment and nutrient runoff.
When properly installed, experts say, they can keep land from washing away as effectively as traditional measures such as bulkheads, which armor the shore with wooden or steel walls, or riprap, which involves piling big rocks or boulders along the water’s edge. Bulkheads and, to a lesser degree, riprap tend to degrade waterfront habitat.
Living shorelines have been encouraged in the Chesapeake region for decades. Moreover, they have been required in Maryland since 2008 and in Virginia since 2020 unless property owners can prove they won’t work. Still, the shift to living shorelines has often been slow.
A tough sell
Living shorelines gained more significance after a report from the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the state-federal Chesapeake Bay Program last year called for more emphasis on improving shallow water habitats.
As much as 18% of the Bay shoreline was armored as of 2016, and scientists say that figure has likely increased as landowners seek to counter the increasing rate of erosion from storms and rising sea levels.
Scientists say there’s ample evidence that living shorelines are more resilient than bulkheads in protecting waterfront property, even against big storms. Even so, they can be a tough sell.
“There’s a lot of work to do to convince people that living shorelines are providing comparable protection as armoring,” said Donna Bilkovic, a marine ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science Center for Coastal Resources Management. Even people who install living shorelines often think bulkheads and revetments provide superior protection, she noted.
Research has shown that bulkheads — and to a lesser extent, revetments — harm water quality and habitat. Bulkheads and seawalls reflect wave energy, which then scours sediment and vegetation from the bottom. While the spaces between rocks in revetments can absorb some of the wave energy, causing less scouring, they still provide less fish and wildlife habitat than fringe marshes found along natural shorelines.
When between 10% and 20% of the shoreline is armored, studies have found adverse ecological effects, including less fish diversity. “The bottom line is with very small amounts of armoring, we can see a localized effect,” Bilkovic said.
The degree of armoring varies around the Bay. Most exists in heavily developed urban and suburban areas. In Maryland, rates of armoring range from single digits in Somerset, Wicomico and Dorchester counties to roughly 40% in Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties. The vast majority of shoreline in Baltimore city is armored, data show.
In Virginia, the greatest amount of hardened shoreline is in the Hampton Roads area, ranging up to 55%, according to VIMS. Up to 25% is armored along Virginia’s major Bay tributaries.
Maryland and Virginia have both made progress in getting property owners to install living shorelines, but the available data are incomplete, leaving it unclear how much progress has been made.
Before 2016, the Maryland Department of the Environment issued waivers from the state’s longstanding living shoreline requirement for about 80% of proposed projects. By 2020, that dropped to 68%, MDE data show.
State officials say they hit a milestone in 2022, when MDE denied more waiver requests than it approved. In that same year, MDE authorized living shorelines on 58% of the 236 projects proposed for sites that had no prior stabilization. The other 42% were allowed to install revetments or bulkheads.
The 2022 data “gives us good news of a preliminary trend that we’re going in the right direction,” said Lee Currey, MDE’s water and science director. His staff are still analyzing 2023 data.
MDE officials attribute their progress, in part, to the completion last year of a web-based mapping tool. Developed by VIMS with funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it shows where living shorelines are suitable for controlling erosion and where wave energy, shoreline height and other conditions could make armoring more appropriate.
Still, MDE automatically grants waivers for any proposed bulkhead or revetment where some kind of hardened shoreline stabilization structure already exists. When those are factored in, the agency approves more permits for bulkheads and revetments than for living shorelines.
Scientists say states are missing opportunities to improve habitat and water quality when they readily approve the replacement of failing bulkheads or revetments in places where living shorelines could be effective.
In Virginia, the number of permit requests to build living shorelines hit an all-time high of 198 in 2022, according to a permit data analysis by VIMS Center for Coastal Resources Management. Outpaced by revetments, though, they only constituted about 35% of projects requesting approval.
Because many projects propose a combination of measures, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission tracks the amount of shoreline covered by each type. But even by that metric, living shorelines proposed in 2022 accounted for only 38% of the waterfront where approvals were sought.
It’s not clear, though, how many of the projects in either Virginia or Maryland are built as proposed. The approval process in both states often involves reviews by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In Virginia, projects must also gain approval from local wetlands boards, which may require substantial revisions.
“The goal is not to deny, it’s to get to a place where it’s approvable,” said Rachael Peabody, VMRC’s director of coastal policy, restoration and resilience. “My goal is to offer more carrots than a stick.”
Those carrots include expert advice from the state and nonprofit groups, along with site visits by VIMS scientists and the Virginia Shoreline Erosion Advisory Service. In Maryland, MDE offers pre-application reviews, and DNR will visit sites to consult with property owners.
Cost concerns
Marine contractors in Maryland say that the state, in some cases, insists on a living shoreline even when the contractors say there’s a strong case that only a revetment can withstand the wave energy.
“We’re not anti-living shoreline,” said Brandon Weems, president of the Maryland Marine Contractors Association. “In many cases, we prefer it, if the homeowner can afford it.” But, he added, “we don’t like experimenting with people’s money. We want to build something that will last.”
A review of a sample of 49 living shoreline projects done from 2020 to 2022 rated 57% “very successful,” 24.5% successful and another 8% “moderately successful,” according to MDE spokesman Jay Apperson. One in 10, or 10%, were deemed unsuccessful, he added.
Yet Steve Peterson, senior project engineer with a marine construction business in Southern Maryland, said in one case he’s dealt with, MDE has insisted on replacing one living shoreline he built that washed away with another one.
Living shorelines don’t always cost more. But the cost is often high in places exposed to intense wind-driven waves, especially with the labor involved in planting and maintaining vegetation. In some cases, homeowners balk at the projected cost and may try armoring the shoreline without a permit.
There has also been pushback in Virginia. State lawmakers voted in 2020 to make living shorelines mandatory “unless the best available science shows that such approaches are not suitable,” alarming many waterfront property owners who unsuccessfully tried to soften the requirement.
One study found that property owners are most heavily influenced by neighbors in deciding whether to go with a revetment or living shoreline. But cost is often a big hurdle.
“They haven’t incentivized living shorelines enough to be palatable to our customers,” said Chris Moore, a planner with Weems Brothers Inc., a marine contracting business in Easton, MD.
“Meeting with different property owners, it’s hard to say a living shoreline of some form won’t work in most sites,” said Wes Gould, chief of DNR’s shoreline conservation service. “But … at what point financially is it unfeasible. Who makes that call?”
There are opportunities to get financial help in both states.
In Virginia, the soil and water conservation districts offer to reimburse 80% of the costs for a living shoreline on private property up to $30,000.
The Virginia Environmental Endowment also has given living shorelines grants totaling $1.4 million to the James River Association and Elizabeth River Project, said Roy Hoagland, the endowment’s senior program officer. The James River Association has completed 30 projects installing 5,900 feet of living shoreline, according to Shawn Ralston, and has funds to do more this year.
Another $2.4 million supported three large projects, one at a local riverfront park, another at a duck hunting preserve on Hog Island and the third at a Boy Scout reservation. Even so, Hoagland said, “I highly doubt that there is sufficient private funding currently available to help every homeowner’s needs and desires.”
Financial help is more limited in Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay Trust helped underwrite about 100 living shorelines from 2005 through 2015 under a grant program funded at $950,000 a year. The program covered 25% of a private property owner’s project and 100% for one done by a municipality or a nonprofit.
The trust still funds some projects, though no programs are specifically marketed for that purpose, said Jana Davis, the trust’s president.
DNR provides technical and financial help in the form of zero-interest loans, and this year eligibility has expanded to individual private property owners, Gould said. His office already has about 150 requests and about $800,000 available.
State officials are also conferring with nongovernmental groups to identify funding sources to help private property owners.
“It’s important for us to communicate that living shorelines are better, more resilient,” said Heather Nelson, MDE’s wetlands and waterways program manager. While living shorelines may initially cost more than a riprap revetment, there is some evidence that they are more cost-effective in the long term because they can be repaired more easily and cheaply. “They’re softer, they can bend and bounce back.”
Bay advocates in Maryland hope to further tighten the permitting regime. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is urging the General Assembly to require scrutiny of waiver requests in locations with existing bulkheads or revetments.
Every time somebody is allowed to “re-armor,” said Bay Foundation senior scientist Doug Myers, an opportunity to create a marsh is lost. “We really do want to do a living shoreline if somebody is at the [point that] they have to replace a bulkhead.”
This article was originally published on BayJournal.com and is republished with permission.