Virginia Beach City Council this week gave the green light to a city effort to restore wetlands at Pleasure House Point despite strong opposition from local residents concerned about impacts to the existing ecosystem.
Council members voted unanimously to redirect $6.6 million in capital improvement funds toward the project, transferred from what had been marked for beach replenishment and work at Rudee Inlet. (The city says they plan to replace those funds through the upcoming budget process, though that will require council approval.)
The plan, which will cost $12 million total, is to convert about eight acres of partially forested land at Pleasure House Point back to the tidal wetlands they once were.
But that involves clearing thousands of existing trees, angering residents who say those trees including pines and live oaks are valuable for local recreation and wildlife habitat. An online petition against the project had more than 2,500 signatures as of Wednesday.
“Wetland restoration and protection is important, but tidal wetlands are not the only threatened maritime habit in the Lynnhaven River Basin,” Windy Crutchfield, a member of No Build VB Wetlands, said at Tuesday’s council meeting. “This current plan irresponsibly destroys something the city pledged to protect.”
The wetlands project has been planned for the site since the city acquired the land in 2012, when Virginia Beach worked with a local land trust and nonprofits to preserve and protect 118 acres from development. The site was once a dumping ground for material dredged from the Lynnhaven Inlet.
Seven years ago, the city got a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the wetland restoration and completed more than 90% of the design. Then, the project sat on the shelf.
The reason behind the city’s sudden sense of urgency to move forward stems from a legal dilemma.
Anytime a public agency or private developer impacts wetlands while building a project, they are required to make up for it elsewhere, using a legal mechanism called wetlands mitigation credits. The system works by earning credits traded in a “mitigation bank.”
Virginia Beach currently needs some of those mitigation credits to move forward on projects, including several that fall under the Flood Protection Program funded by 2021’s voter bond referendum.
But city officials say there are none available right now in the Lynnhaven River watershed.
“I’ll be honest, we didn't anticipate being here. It was always our intent to purchase the credits. That was our hope, that was our desire, that was our plan. But the credits that we were told would materialize did not materialize,” public works director LJ Hansen told council this week. “This was our contingency plan for how to get the credits, and we are down to our contingency.”
He apologized for the last-minute nature of the request despite the project being on the books for more than a decade.
Residents pushing back against the plan recently identified another opportunity for the city to buy credits, through a project at New Mill Creek in the Elizabeth River area. But Hansen said the Army Corps likely wouldn’t accept credits coming from a separate watershed, and the city would not be guaranteed to win the credits on the open market.
In response to concerns raised about endangered species on the site, such as terrapin turtles, Hansen said “we welcome the opportunity to work with the agencies that have interest in that, and we will, of course, take all precautions that we can to protect it.”
Council members said they were sympathetic to residents’ concerns, but could not risk setting back projects like the Windsor Woods pump station.
“It doesn't feel good to sit up here when we're being asked to decide between cutting down a bunch of trees and making residents angry, or delaying Flood Protection Program projects and risking the lives and property of people in areas of our city that were tremendously impacted by by flooding in (Hurricane) Matthew,” said Councilman Joash Schulman.
Virginia Beach plans to plant 600 new trees in the area. Officials say they don’t yet know exactly how many will be torn down.
Students with the nearby Environmental Studies Program found more than 5,000 in the project site during an initial count. They’re now working with the city arborist for a detailed survey.
Karen Forget, director of the nonprofit Lynnhaven River Now, said at the council meeting the restored wetlands are equally important for the local ecosystem.
“We all wish that this work could be accomplished with less tree loss, but with careful planning, the tree loss can be mitigated, and the wetlands will provide more species diversity and more ecological and water quality value than the sand fill that is there currently.”
Nonprofits also urged the city to follow its own ordinance mandating a one-to-one replacement of all trees cut down during construction.
Virginia Beach now plans to start construction at Pleasure House Point next month and finish in October.
