GLOUCESTER, Va. — Citizens on the Middle Peninsula are coming together and taking action to fight flooding and sea level rise.
Various public and private stakeholders have joined forces to form the "Virginia Coastal Resilience and Adaptation Ecosystem."
It's a collaborative effort by Virginia Sea Grant, RISE Resilience Innovations, and the Middle Peninsula Chesapeake Bay Public Access Authority.
The project establishes a "living lab" and support system for developing technologies designed to protect coastal communities facing hazards from water.
"Everyone in the flood plain is threatened. It's either slowly threatened or threatened every single day. Anybody who lives on the shoreline right now is battling a flood mitigation problem. There are solutions. Doing nothing is not an option," said Lewie Lawrence, Director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission.
Virginia's Middle Peninsula has 1,000 miles of shoreline, most of it privately owned.