Fast-rising sea slowly erasing coastal Virginia communities

Most of Hog Island has eroded into the Atlantic
Ocean. (Photo map by The Washington Post)

In 1892, the town of Broadwater, on Virginia's Hog Island, was a bustling community with hunting and fishing clubs, families and plenty of oysters. By the early 1900s, the effects of erosion could be seen along the coastline of the southern Delmarva Peninsula, and now "The remains of Broadwater have been lost to the Atlantic Ocean," and the town residents moved to is being threatened by rising sea level, report Chris Mooney, Zoeann Murphy and Simon Ducroquet of The Washington Post.

Buddy Bell, born on Hog Island, told the writers, "I was the next-to-last kid born on there. At one time the island was two miles wide, and now you can throw a shell across it." His family, like many on the island, barged their homes to Oyster, Va., and started over.

Now Oyster is "threatened by a fast-rising ocean, as is much of the U.S. East Coast," they write. "The menace today is different: human-caused climate change. But for some in Oyster, the question of the past echoes today: stay or go?"

Global warming is expanding the ocean, and it's impossible to know how high it will rise. Tide gauges have measured sea levels since 1927, and readings in places like nearby Hampton Roads have been grim. The Post reports, "Seas there rose by more than six millimeters annually over the past 30 years, compared with four millimeters per year during the three decades before."

Post map shows hotspot is sea-level rise.

Barrier islands change for many reasons, but Virginia's are changing at an accelerated rate. "Just 250 miles off Virginia, one of the world’s most dramatic sea-level-rise hot spots has emerged, revealed by satellite measurements that began three decades ago," the Post reports. "Signaling a shift in the Gulf Stream, a massive current that carries heat northward, it’s the most visible sign of a rapidly changing ocean." Kris Karnauskas, a sea-level-rise expert at the University of Colorado, told the writers, “That hot spot just happens to be the loudest symptom of something large-scale and grand going on."

"Oyster now sits near this emerging sea-level-rise hot spot," the reporters write, "and so does part of the legacy of life on Hog Island." The Virginia Coast Reserve Program for the Nature Conservancy, which owns much of the land around Oyster, is hoping to help the community develop a global warming relocation plan.

Trump calls mayor of shrinking island that gave him 87% of vote, tells him not to worry about sea level

The mayor holds a crab with oysters growing on it.
(Photo via Chesapeake Bay Foundation)

The mayor of a Chesapeake Bay island that is shrinking by 15 feet a year got a call from President Trump telling him not to worry about rising seas from climate change, reports Travis Andrews of The Washington Post.

The call to James "Ooker" Eskridge was prompted by a CNN story that reported, "The residents here are extremely scared that if something isn't done soon, their homes and livelihoods will be washed away." It included Eskridge saying, "We've depended on the Chesapeake Bay for a couple hundred years or more, and now it's the Chesapeake Bay that's the greatest threat to our existence. . . . Donald Trump, if you see this, whatever you can do, we welcome any help you can give us." He added later, "I love Trump as much as any family member I got."

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The story noted that Trump got 87 percent of the island's vote. “He said we shouldn’t worry about rising sea levels,” Eskridge told the Post. “He said that ‘Your island has been there for hundreds of years, and I believe your island will be there for hundreds more.’” Eskridge said he agreed that rising sea levels aren’t a problem for Tangier, because “I’m on the water daily, and I just don’t see it.” He blames the island's shrinkage on the waves of the bay causing erosion of beaches and soil.

"The Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to begin building a jetty on the west channel of the island some time this year to protect it from the harsh currents," Andrews reports. "But Eskridge said they need a jetty, or perhaps even a sea wall, around the entire island. He believes Trump will cut through red tape and get them that wall."

UPDATE, June 16: In a Skype interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Eskridge said "Sea-level rise may be occurring, but it's a slow pace," while wave erosion is seen weekly. "The island is settling, sinking, but we can pump material onto the island to build the island up." He added, "I know there's changes in the climate . . . I'm just not totally convinced that it's man-made."