Helping hands (and funds) bring living shoreline to Portsmouth riverfront residence

Tucked behind a residential neighborhood just off a major highway, a Portsmouth riverfront residence swarms with volunteers.

For three weeks, people from all walks of life – retired engineers, students, even a few Crossfit groups – have been unloading bags of loose shell, hauling wheelbarrows of sand and building the foundation of a new 718-foot “living shoreline.”

The volunteers, along with The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Elizabeth River Project and property-owners the Berner family, hope the living shoreline project will inspire more residents to use natural barriers rather than hardscapes to prevent flooding and erosion.

They’re all corralled by Kati Grigsby, a restoration specialist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which has taken on much of the work — and cost — of installing the nature-based approach to protecting waterfront land, combining a wide, sloped design with native grasses, natural materials and, often, oyster colonies.

With sand on her nose and sudden wide smiles, Grigsby’s enthusiasm for the project is infectious as she points out the types of vegetation near the high-tide line and explains what they show about the land’s erosion and resilience, along with the way the new shoreline will change the growth. She mentions periwinkle with anticipation, three times.

“It’s adaptive management, not flood management,” she said, pulling up photos on her phone of other sites where ground has eroded even behind a traditional concrete bulwark, as water pulls at the soil and sand from underneath the barrier.

The best way to build resilience against sea level rise, she said, is a natural landscape that stabilizes the shore and can continue to grow in response to changing conditions.

“People just aren’t ready,” she said. “The visual safety of a wall makes people feel protected.” But it’s a false sense of security.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Elizabeth River Project are trying to change that with projects like this one.

Living shorelines provide a wide range of infrastructure and ecosystem benefits, from stabilizing the shore against erosion and dispersing wave energy to absorbing stormwater runoff (and the pollution it carries) and nurturing the building blocks of the maritime food chain. And as of July 1, 2020, they’re the law.

The “Living Shoreline Law,” Senate Bill 776, forbids the Virginia Marine Resources Commission from approving permits for hardened shorelines like concrete seawalls and bulkheads, unless “the best available science” shows that a living shoreline is not suitable. Existing structures don’t need to be replaced just to comply with the law – but as they age and require repair, permits might not be approved.

The Berner family, however, no longer needs to worry about that, thanks to funding and logistical support from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Elizabeth River Project – and the determination of a young family member.

By the end of the summer, the banks of their family home on an inlet of the Elizabeth River will boast a reimagined landscape with a sanctuary oyster reef that will filter water and, eventually, attract larger fish by providing habitats for their food sources.

Better fishing is something Christian Berner, 23, particularly anticipates. He’s been pursuing this project since the pandemic sent him home from Hampden-Sydney College in 2020.

“I guess my connection to the environment is usually gastronomic. I just like to eat stuff,” Berner said, laughing. “The best way to get the best food is to have the best environment.”

Berner’s tongue-in-cheek comment is built on childhood memories of fishing at West Norfolk Bridge with his dad and cooking up the day’s catch, or learning to hunt because his mother, who is from Japan, tasted venison for the first time shortly after they bought the property in 2008, and told his dad to get her more.

But even a short conversation makes it clear that however much they love to eat, conservation is a way of life for the Berners.

When pandemic life left the youngest Berner bored at home, he remembered learning about living shorelines during field trips he had made to the Elizabeth River Project outdoor classroom at Paradise Creek, an 11-acre site the organization reclaimed from decades of pollution by metal scrap yards, naval landfills and urban waste.

Forty years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency singled out the Elizabeth River as one of the most polluted in the entire Bay watershed. It’s still on the impaired waters list, but the work done to reclaim the river over the past 30 years inspired Berner, along with comparing what he sees from his family’s dock with other places he’s been.

“I’ve been to nicer places on the Chesapeake Bay, and I just want the Elizabeth River to be like that, for there to be more fish and cleaner water,” he said. “Maybe one day in 80 years there might actually be beaches on the Elizabeth River. Who knows?”

A friend told Berner that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation could help coordinate and even fund the project, and representatives came out for a site visit, but complications caused by the pandemic led to delays.

Finally, after Berner finished his degree in business and economics last year, he turned his attention back to the shoreline. This time, things moved surprisingly quickly.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Elizabeth River Project staff met with him and his father last September and surveyed the shoreline. By January they had the basics of a contract in place, and by April the foundation had full approval for the permits they needed.

“They rocked it. They absolutely rocked it,” said Berner’s father, Leif Berner.

If not for the foundation handling the process, the project wouldn’t have been feasible, he said. But he wouldn’t have even started it without their financial support.

When his son first came to him, he said, he was shocked by the expense of a living shoreline project. Costs vary widely depending on the existing landscape, but are typically in the tens of thousands of dollars.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that installation costs can range anywhere from less than $1,000 all the way up to $5,000 per linear foot.

“I was like, yeah, there’s no way that’s going to happen,” Leif Berner said. “But it’s nice to see money coming back from a lot of organizations that people have donated to for years, and it’s going to benefit everybody downstream of us.”

There are a variety of ways homeowners in Hampton Roads can get funding and support for installing living shorelines, depending on which of the seven cities they reside in. The funding for the Berners’ property originally came from the Virginia Environmental Endowment and is covering around 90% of the cost. That’s a higher proportion than most of their projects, according to foundation staff; usually their portion of the cost-share is under 75%.

“What’s really remarkable is the government funding just to get all the raw materials, it costs a lot of money,” Christian Berner said.

The community support has also impressed the whole family, from the involvement of restaurants that donate oyster shells to form the sanctuary reef, to the enthusiasm and variety of the volunteers descending on their property at low tide every day.

The Berner/Chesapeake Bay Foundation Living Shoreline Project still needs volunteers for the rest of the summer. Volunteers can sign up at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation website, www.cbf.org, or use this link for the project page.

Katrina Dix, 757-222-5155, katrina.dix@virginiamedia.com