Tangier Island Approved For Jetty Project

Photo/Tangier History Museum

By Scott Harper

The Virginia-Pilot

After nearly two decades of waiting in vain for help, Tangier Island has won federal approval for a $4.1 million jetty project to protect its western shore and central harbor from rising seas, storm surges and rapid erosion.

Gov. Bob McDonnell is scheduled to announce the news at a ceremony Tuesday on the remote fishing outpost in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, according to state and federal officials familiar with the plans.

McDonnell also will sign an agreement to share project costs with the Army Corps of Engineers, which will oversee the design and construction of the new stone barrier at the mouth of the main harbor in the town of Tangier, the officials said.

The corps first endorsed the jetty project in 1996, but it hasn't been built for lack of funds. Island leaders have pleaded for financial help since then, saying that without protection from pounding surf and rising sea levels, the exposed western entrance to their harbor would sustain more damage and put fishing boats, docks, homes and lives at risk.

"We're pretty excited," Tangier Mayor James "Ooker" Eskridge said this week. Like most of the 450 other island residents, Eskridge lives off catching crabs, oysters and other seafood from the surrounding Bay.

"This will give folks a boost," he added. "After each storm, people were losing their desire to reinvest here, kind of losing hope. We weren't quite sure if we'd ever see this day."

After Hurricane Sandy swept through Virginia late last month, one of Tangier's famous crab shanties, where soft-shell crabs are grown to market size, was destroyed, and two others were left "pretty much unusable," the mayor said. Boats and shoreline were damaged, too.

With the mouth of the harbor getting wider and wider because of erosion, "the impact of storms kept moving farther and farther inland," Eskridge said. "It was becoming difficult to know where you could tie up your boat and be safe."

The jetty project will unfold in three phases: a study to determine how best to proceed; the design of the stone jetty or jetties to stymie wave action; then actual construction. The study already is under way and should be completed in 2014, said Patrick Bloodgood, a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers in Norfolk.

The design should take two more years, and construction is expected to commence and be finished in 2017 - "if all the stars align," Bloodgood said.

Money already is anted up for the study, he said, but Congress still must set aside funds for the design and construction phases, and corps leaders in Washington must allocate those funds toward the Tangier project when measured against hundreds of others nationwide.

Doug Domenech, the governor's secretary of natural resources, toured Tangier Island in May and told local leaders that the McDonnell administration would try to win approval for the jetty project.

While administration officials lobbied the corps to embrace a jetty system, members of Virginia's congressional delegation did so, too.

Asked what did the trick this year, Bloodgood said, "I'm not really sure, only that I know the governor's office has pushed pretty hard on this item."

Tangier Island still faces an uncertain future, its shores threatened by sea level rise and sinking land. A seawall made of rock has protected a piece of the western side of the island since the 1980s.

But with erosion rates eclipsing 16 feet of land per year on the west and 3 feet a year on the east, Tangier's dwindling population is nervous about simply being swallowed up by the Bay.

Eskridge said the governor toured the island after Sandy and expressed support for more help to the east, perhaps a jetty project there, too. But the mayor is realistic about finding funds during these lean times.

"The government has waited so long to move on these projects," he said, "so now they're millions of dollars more expensive than if we had dome something earlier. I don't know. It's frustrating."

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