The coastal zone is already home to the majority of Virginia’s population, largely in the highly developed of land referred to as the “urban crescent”.  Between 1990 and 2000 the population of Virginia’s coastal zone increased by more than half a million people, accounting for more than 60% of the population growth in the entire state (Virginia Coastal Program, 2001).  If the population continues to increase as it did between 1990 and 2000, Virginia’s coastal zone will add an additional one million residents by 2020. 

Providing places to live, work, play, and shop, and all the infrastructure required by these land uses, requires the permanent conversion of forests, wetlands, farms and meadows to urban land uses.  More specifically, a tremendous amount of the economic value, habitat potential and aesthetic quality of Virginia’s coasts are in many ways dependent upon a handful of critical coastal features.  Although increasingly threatened by poorly planned coastal development, submerged aquatic vegetation, oysters, riparian forest buffers, tidal wetlands, and sand dunes, protect water quality, provide food and habitat for numerous coastal species and help buffer coastal areas from damaging wind and wave energy. 

v     Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) provides food and shelter for fish, shellfish, waterfowl, and a variety of invertebrates.  SAV absorb nutrients in the water column, buffers wave energy allowing sediments to settle out, and helps oxygenate the water. Like other plants, SAV requires plentiful sunlight.  Large amounts of suspended sediments and nutrient-induced algal growth can cause SAV decline by limiting the amount of light that can reach the submerged vegetation. 

v     Oysters provide critical habitat for numerous shellfish, finfish and crabs and help reduce wave energy that can tear up SAV beds and erode shorelines.  Oysters can also play a significant role in improving water clarity by removing sediments and organic matter while filtering large quantities of water through their bodies for food.  Nonpoint source pollution severely impacts oyster health. Excessive sediments bury and suffocate oysters, heavy metals poison them, and excessive nutrients cause algal blooms that suffocate larval oysters when mass algal die-offs consume much of the available oxygen as they decay.  

v     Riparian forest buffers are vegetated areas adjacent to streams, rivers, marshes and shorelines that form transitional zones between surface waters and the upland.  These vegetated areas and the unique soils that these areas create stabilize shorelines and streams banks, filter pollutants from stormwater runoff and shallow groundwater, and provide critical habitat for aquatic species and wildlife.  Shoreline development may result in the destruction of the forest vegetation and soils critical to the proper functioning of riparian buffers, eliminating habitat and degrading water quality. 

v     Tidal wetlands  including vegetated marshes and swamps and nonvegetated mud and sand flats, are influenced by daily tidal fluctuations Tidal wetlands provide many socio-economic benefits including: water quality improvement, aquatic productivity, fish and wildlife habitat, shoreline erosion control, stormwater treatment, flood protection, potable water supplies, economically valuable resources, and recreation.  Shoreland development can degrade tidal wetlands by overwhelming them with excess sediments and nutrients, filling portions for housing and other urban development, introducing invasive plant and animal species, and destroying  wetlands through the placement of shoreline erosion structures.

v     Dunes protect both beaches and inland habitat and property from erosion. By acting as natural barriers, dunes protect inland areas from storms, high waves, and wind. Dunes also hold sand that can replenish eroded beaches. Residential and commercial development is responsible for destroying many dunes in Virginia

Land development has a direct impact on the health of coastal environments.  The removal of vegetation, the grading of the land, the installation and use of septic systems, the increase in impervious surfaces and the use of nutrients and pesticides for lawn care can create substantial nonpoint source pollution.  Boat wakes and changes in the shoreline for erosion control or recreational use can harm or destroy aquatic and terrestrial habitat and severely degrade the beneficial functions of both tidal and nontidal wetlands.  Alarmingly, between 1970 and 2000 average house sizes have increased 51% (from 1,500 square feet to 2,265 square feet), average lot sizes have increased by 60%, and average household populations have decreased.  (Chesapeake Bay Program, 2004).   These changes in land use patterns pose a grave threat to the future health of Virginia’s coastal environments.  

As a signatory of the Chesapeake Bay 2000 Agreement, Virginia has agreed to the goal of reducing the harmful rate of sprawl throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed by 30% by 2010.  Achieving this goal will help protect both the Bay’s water quality and Virginia’s coasts.  Drastic changes will be needed in the way Virginia communities plan and manage land uses if coastal sprawl is to be reigned in.  Effective coastal planning is necessary to guide future land use along Virginia’s coasts in order to achieve these goals.

Coastal planning exemplifies “Smart Growth” for Virginia’s coastal zone.  Coastal planning is a land management process for maintaining, protecting, and restoring the natural resources of coastal areas while also enhancing the quality of life in local communities.  Successfully planning and managing land use to protect Virginia’s coastal resources will require innovative land use reforms at three scales of application.  Regional scale planning determines where land development should occur on a metropolitan scale – which often includes multiple watersheds, hundreds of thousands or millions of acres, and numerous sensitive coastal environments. Neighborhood scale planning determines how development is organized – what street patterns are laid out, and how different land uses are arranged and at what densities.  Finally, site scale planning determines how development projects area constructed – what stormwater management, conservation design, and riparian buffer protections will be employed[1]. 

The next two decades will see unprecedented development along the coasts of Virginia.  Although substantial energy has been directed toward improving site planning to protect aquatic resources, the continued failing health of many coastal areas indicates that concentrating on site planning alone, in lieu of regional and neighborhood planning, cannot protect aquatic ecosystems from decline.  Many of Virginia’s coastal communities are already employing a wide variety of land planning and management approaches, at all three planning scales, to help protect Virginia’s coastal environments.  This website attempts to describe as many of these local planning initiatives as possible to demonstrate the innovative approaches already being implemented by local governments to protect Virginia’s Coasts.   

·       Regional Planning for Virginia’s Coasts

·       Neighborhood Planning for Coastal Communities

·        Implementing Better Coastal Planning

[1] This description of the inherent need to plan and manage coastal development at three scales of application is drawn directly from Coastal Sprawl: The Effects of Urban Design of Aquatic Ecosystems in the United States. (Prepared for the Pew Oceans Commission by Dana Beach of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League.)  The authors believe Beach did an outstanding job summarizing land planning needs for the protection of coastal environments and attempted to adapt Beach’s argument to demonstrate the innovative land use approaches being employed by local governments in Virginia that help protect the coastal resources of the Commonwealth.  

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