The Sea Has Already Claimed 2/3 Of Tangier Island; Study Projects 10 Years Left For Most Residents [View all]

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Tangier Island, in Virginia's portion of the Chesapeake Bay, once had eight ridges, with distinct towns on each. But with every heavy storm, the once-sturdy island lost more ground. By the 1930s, only three communities remained, all on ridges separated by bridges over a marsh.

Rising seas are engulfing Tangier Island so quickly that most of its remaining residents may be forced to flee the low-lying Chesapeake Bay community during the next decade, according to a bleak new assessment published Nov. 8 in Frontiers of Climate. The rest won’t be too far behind — staying until 2053, it predicts. “The town of Tangier's citizens will join the growing numbers of humanity forced to relocate due to climate change, becoming climate change refugees,” wrote the authors of the peer-reviewed study. “That this is happening such a short distance away” — 93 miles — “from the capital of the USA in Washington, DC, and proceeding apace with little aid, despite all the media attention Tangier Island and the town have had, should alarm us all.”

Tangier’s options are few and hugely expensive, the report suggests. A large-scale effort to save the island, the paper estimates, would cost $250–$350 million. Fighting sea level rise would entail wrapping jetties around erosion-prone shorelines, raising the town’s elevation by 9 feet with sand dredged from the bottom of the Bay and upgrading the community’s plumbing and electricity networks, the report asserts. The only other alternative — abandoning the island and relocating the town’s 400 residents to the mainland — would come with a $100–$200 million price tag.

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Rising seas, land subsidence and erosion have claimed approximately two-thirds of the Tangier Island system’s land mass since 1850.

The study adds new urgency to the debate over the fate of the tiny island, which has shrunk to little more than a few brushstrokes of sand and marsh in Virginia’s portion of the Bay. Its primary author is David Schulte, the veteran U.S. Army Corps of Engineers marine biologist whose 2015 study helped put Tangier at the center of a political fight over the reality of climate change. Many Tangier residents doubt that the climate is changing despite strong evidence that rising seas and stronger storms are scouring the island away at an alarming rate, or they point to erosion as a much greater concern. Many agree with former President Trump’s assertion during a famous 2017 phone call with the town’s mayor that they have nothing to worry about from sea level rise.

Schulte’s 2015 study had suggested otherwise — in stark terms that captured headlines across the country and resounded all the way to the White House. Using historic maps and aerial photos, Schulte and his team found that two-thirds of the island had disappeared since 1850, leaving just more than 700 acres of total land. Depending on how much and how quickly seas rise, they calculated, residents would likely have to abandon the town within 25-50 years.

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https://www.bayjournal.com/news/climate_change/study-tangier-s-imminent-climate-change-demise-should-alarm-us-all/article_0fb8fabc-4183-11ec-87e1-8fb4d07f507d.html