By Jugal Patel, Student Correspondent
This is Part 5 in the “Adapting to Rising Seas” series.
Five miles deep into the Elizabeth River’s southern branch, a 1907 fire exploded 75,000 gallons of black tar that were held in wood treatment plants. A century later, the chemicals remained, causing cancer in the river’s fish, and a local nonprofit organization, the Elizabeth River Project, sought to restore the contaminated marsh.
“The shoreline was all phragmites,” recalls Joe Rieger, referring to an invasive coastal plant. As Deputy Director of Restoration, Riegar had to get rid of the plant: “So we bulldozed all the phrag into this huge berm behind it.”
The project’s priority was marsh restoration—not flood control. But the berm, an embankment along the coastline, rises seven feet tall in some areas. It has since withstood the highest flood elevation recorded in the area, brought by a 2009 nor’easter.
By drawing in professionals with Rieger’s depth of experience, an adaptation project in Nofolk’s Chesterfield Heights neighborhood has accomplished feats beyond flood control, as it helped to develop a community of practice for adaptation efforts, from veterans of the restoration process to others who are just getting started.
Engineering students from Old Dominion University (ODU) and architecture students from Hampton University (HU) spent the last year working with professionals to adapt a historic community for flooding as part of a Virginia Sea Grant-funded project.
Rieger’s role was to provide support for the young designers, who have since graduated. His feedback focused mostly on a living shoreline, designed by students.
Rieger was happy to hand off the baton, and provide support for the young designers, now graduates. His feedback focused mostly on a living shoreline for the neighborhood, designed by students.
“I enjoyed watching the students embed themselves into a community, get to the know the community, understand the issues that the community is having, and respond with solutions that are implementable,” he says.
The students learned from and worked with about 35 architects and engineers, stormwater managers, city officials, historic preservationists, wetlands specialists, masons, and other professionals.
“Students are the next generation to deal with these issues,” says Rieger. “The more we can integrate their ideas and learn from each other, the quicker these issues are going to be addressed.”
“When we started out with our basic concept, everything we researched worked,” said Shanice Proctor, an ODU engineering student that led the living shoreline design.
“But when you bring in a professional, they’re like, ‘okay this is all nice in theory, but if you want us to approve it, these are the changes you need to make.’ Going through those little hoops and hurdles and learning the city’s regulations on certain things was cool.”
Ann Stokes, who also worked with students on the project, has dealt with flooding issues for years. Stokes owns her own landscape architecture firm with projects mostly in residential, campus, and institutional work. The firm’s first project taking the future of the coastline into account was 15 years ago, in Norfolk’s Larchmont neighborhood.
In recent years, Stokes has seen a professional community of practice develop among adaptation efforts, something the Chesterfield Heights project sought to encourage further. As resilience projects focus down towards the neighborhood level, and get closer to implementation, more specialists need to be brought in.
“When you’re changing the nature of a neighborhood, it involves a whole slew of people, not to mention all the mechanical, electrical, and infrastructure issues that come with that,” she says. “There’s a broad spectrum of professionals that need to be involved.”
Landscape architects can function as a bridge between others, according to Stokes. They work especially well between civil engineers and architects.
The idea of an advancing shoreline has also had an influence on the practice of landscape architecture in coastal areas. “We used to joke, with campus work, that form followed parking. But now, form follows stormwater,” said Stokes. “Stormwater has always been a part of our work, but it’s definitely a bigger piece now.”
This story is part of an in-depth, seven-part series, “Adapting to Rising Seas,” on the award-winning Chesterfield Heights resiliency design project. Stories explore different aspects of the project.
