Who Is The Intended User of This Guide? 

The Guide is intended to assist Virginia local elected officials, government staff and community leaders as they undertake their resilience planning in anticipation of changing conditions. Localities can use it to augment the information provided by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Floodplains and Flood Resilience Planning webpages, which include the Virginia Coastal Resilience Master Plan. Additionally, the Guide supports the development of a DCR Resilience Plan that is needed to access flood resilience project funding from the Community Flood Preparedness Fund.  Refer to DCR’s CFPF website for the latest requirements for an approved Resilience Plan.

Why Use This Guide? 

In the face of daunting climate change impacts such as rising heat and increasing flooding due to sea level rise, land subsidence, and more severe storm events, local governments in Virginia need to engage in thoughtful and pragmatic community planning. Communities (large and small, urban and rural) face the same needs: 

• to identify their risks and vulnerabilities; 
• to consider potential distinct impacts on at-risk communities; 
• to plan solutions with full community input and participation; 
• to make difficult decisions on what to save, when, and how; and 
• to find sufficient funding for it all. 

In short, proactive, community-led, and inclusive adaptation planning is necessary now more than ever. Inaction is the worst choice, condemning communities to reactive, piecemeal responses rather than proactive, holistic planning for the risks. 

What Does This Guide Do?

The Guide provides some best practices for fostering planning at the local level with full community engagement; for using various tools and approaches to identify vulnerable areas and minimize community risk; and for enabling economic drivers and robust planning to support community relocation when necessary. It is not intended to be all-inclusive, as resources and circumstances change over time. Rather, it is intended to be a source of inspiration and information, as well as “lessons learned” from communities across the nation and world. It also highlights some innovative ideas from other states that could be adopted in Virginia, such as rolling easements and required flood history disclosure upon sale of residential properties. 

Local governments can use the Guide to help them put together a suite of complementary tools – such as living shorelines, public education, targeted buyout programs, regulatory setbacks and building code requirements in floodplains – that effectively mitigate risks and encourage adaptation.¹ Local leadership and political will play important roles in developing proactive and innovative solutions. So local governments should invest in developing community leaders who understand and can help communicate local climate-triggered risks to increase local support for adaptation planning.

The Guide divides the adaptation planning process into 5 Steps: Initial Assessment, Strategy Development, Detailed Planning, Funding Plan, and Plan Implementation, Evaluation, and Adjustment. Each step includes specific actions and discusses some best practices, helpful tools and resources, and community engagement challenges. It is not necessary to start at Step 1, and the process is not necessarily linear. Some communities may be further along in this process and may be able to start at a later step, while others may be just beginning and should start at Step 1. Communities are encouraged to assess where they are in the process and what they want to achieve with an adaptation planning process. See the How to Use This Guide section for more guidance.

Step 1 also includes discussion of some over-arching considerations, such as:

• the need for each community to define “resilience,” and define it broadly;
• the value of obtaining full community engagement and input at each step, and committing the time and resources to build trust with socially vulnerable residents;
• the need to incorporate equity concerns at each step, rather than as a separate process;
• the importance of conducting a community values analysis, setting priorities for what to save and how, and determining what events or changed circumstances will trigger additional actions; and
• when communities choose to pursue short-term solutions to “buy time”, the need to decide how to use that bought time wisely. The goal is to achieve a safe, resilient and flourishing community, and to provide a proactive “glide path” to get there, rather than facing an economic crash that drives reactive decision-making.

Moving residents out of harm’s way also is featured as part of the adaptation planning process for areas where other adaptation approaches are not sufficient to keep residents safe. Communities need to accept the reality of their current and predicted levels of risk, and if they are facing an increasingly dire future, it is better to confront the truth quickly and deal with hardship in the shorter term than face greater risk, costs, and loss of life and property in the future. Voluntary buy-outs can provide vulnerable residents with a safe alternative before their homes become unsellable, and avoid the need for repeated flood insurance payouts. Even when moving is necessary, providing safe alternatives for relocation within the same area can reduce the tax revenue loss for local government and enable residents to retain cultural and social connections.

We cannot avoid natural hazards. But we can avoid resultant disasters caused by poor decisions and a lack of adequate planning. By facing the increasing frequency of severe storm events; updating our building codes and stormwater management design standards; being transparent with the public about the risks; and working to move residents and businesses out of harm’s way in the most vulnerable areas, communities can increase their resilience, protect their cultural and social ties, and even reduce their costs. Proactive planning is key.

¹ For example, see Dyckman, C., St. John, C. and London, J. “Realizing managed retreat and innovation in state-level coastal management planning,” Ocean & Coastal Management 102 (2014), p. 212-223 (discussing innovative coastal states’ combination of tools used in coastal management). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0964569114002919.