Norfolk leaders last year asked the federal government to re-evaluate extending its planned floodwall to several historically Black neighborhoods on the Southside, after concerns from residents about not receiving the same protections as downtown.
It’s now clear that study won’t happen for at least another year, and will take several more years to complete.
The Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District did not receive funding to do the Southside study in the agency’s most recent federal work plan, said Michelle Hamor, the district’s planning and policy chief. That would have been a longshot considering the request was submitted late in the process.
But higher-ups at the Corps have expressed support for the effort, she said, especially given environmental justice principles outlined by the Biden administration.
“Certainly it falls very well in alignment with the administration's principles of focusing and making sure that we're being equitable in terms of how we are benefiting the community,” she said.
It all hinges on getting congressional funding, which the district’s now pursuing for fiscal year 2025. Hamor said they expect a study could take around three years and $3 million, though the scope has not yet been developed.
The effort started last spring when Norfolk City Council approved the $2.6 billion floodwall project with the Army Corps.
Shortly beforehand, residents of Campostella and Berkley learned the floodwall would not be built on their side of the water. (The plan included some non-structural measures like home elevations and potential buyouts.)
Community members showed up in force to protest their exclusion, some carrying signs that urged officials to follow a federal initiative called Justice40, which aims to make sure marginalized communities benefit from at least 40% of federal climate spending.
“We were told some basements would be filled with concrete and some homes would be elevated on stilts,” Sharon Hendrick, president of the Campostella Civic League, previously told WHRO. “And that wasn’t sufficient enough for us.”
Local, state and federal leaders held community meetings and ultimately agreed to formally ask the federal government for permission to re-evaluate current plans, including potentially building flood structures in the Southside. That request is pending until the funding can be secured.
In the meantime, Norfolk is finalizing designs for the first phase of the floodwall.
The city’s overall plan with the Army Corps is called the Coastal Storm Risk Management project. It’s the furthest along in a series of projects proposed up and down the U.S. coastline after Hurricane Sandy caused billions of dollars of damage in 2012.
The effort includes a range of strategies meant to protect residents from catastrophic flooding during major storms like Sandy, including new pump stations and surge barriers stretched across some local waterways.
The flagship piece is an almost 9-mile-long series of seawall and levees wrapping around downtown from almost the Campostella Bridge up to Lambert’s Point.
The scope of the project was approved by Congress — meaning any changes have to be as well.
The equity problem stems from the way the Army Corps evaluates a project’s worth, known as a cost-benefit analysis, which prioritizes protecting the dollar value of real estate. That leaves lower-income areas like Norfolk’s Southside at a disadvantage, especially because of historic discrimination in urban planning that purposefully depressed property values in those areas.
Changing the Corps’ cost-benefit analysis would be “unprecedented,” a Norfolk District spokesperson said last year.
Hamor said this week that if a study is funded, officials want to use a more holistic approach that includes factors like a community’s history.
“You might have neighborhoods that are generational. They’ve been there, their families have been there,” Hamor said. “We can't always characterize that with numbers to justify it, but we can describe it. And I think those are very important talking points that we need to dig into and really learn more about the community.”
