♪ CHRIS LUDFORD: What it means to be an oyster farmer is to craft a oyster here on the Lynnhaven that meets the reputation of the river that meets the reputation of the river and do it in a way that's sustainable and profitable but is good for the environment.

JIM KINTNER: The Tidewater area of the Potomac, James and York Rivers, those are all being threatened by sea level rise.

Sea level rise is a consequence of global warming.

J. MAURICE HOPKINS: Redlining destroyed the whole Jackson Ward community.

Everything was in walking distance and it was a community, not like it is today.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Virginia is our state, our future.

Climate change poses a real threat to life as we know it.

In this episode, we'll meet one farmer dedicated to keeping our oyster industry prosperous, learn about a university that's helping local communities prepare for the challenges of climate change, how flooding is impacting Virginians across the Commonwealth, and discover why transportation advances have come at a cost.

You're watching VPM News Focal Point.

Production funding for VPM News Focal Point is provided by ♪ ♪ KEYRIS MANZANARES: Welcome to this special edition of VPM News Focal Point.

I'm Keyris Manzanares.

In Virginia Beach, Lynnhaven oysters are famous.

Legend has it they were among Captain John Smith's first meals when he arrived in Virginia in 1607.

Next, we'll meet an oyster farmer who's determined to keep the Lynnhaven delicacy thriving.

CHRIS LUDFORD: Go ahead and pitch it off to the port.

People come to Virginia Beach and come to Virginia for the oyster trail, to experience oysters and oyster roasts, oyster festivals.

They drink wine with the oysters.

There's a whole relationship that oysters have with the food and wine and tourism world, and people come to Virginia for our oysters.

What it means to be an oyster farmer is to craft a oyster here on the Lynnhaven that meets the reputation of the river and do it in a way that's sustainable and profitable but is good for the environment.

The Lynnhaven oyster is special and unique because of the balance.

It's salty, but not too salty.

It's got seaweed notes.

It's got a great flavor.

It's not earthy or metallic like other areas.

It's just a sweet, briny oyster.

It's just perfect.

It's a 300 year legend.

Oysters are often looked at as being the seafood mascot of Virginia, because it's just been here forever.

It's been the food of royalty.

It was the food throughout the 17 and 1800s.

It's bucket time.

They ate oysters, you know, with the first colonists to help them get through the winter when it was very difficult.

So it's been a food from day one.

It's also was a food of ancient civilizations.

So it's a food that's been around a long time, and it's had its ups and downs.

And now we're finding out new things about it, and we're bringing it back.

And it's just an exciting food to be around.

For every day that we harvest and sell the oysters, there's three or four days of work where we don't make a dime.

And that is keeping the oysters from being crowded.

So that's what we did today.

We split the oysters in their containers, which were bags in this case.

So for every bag that we cleaned and divided became two bags.

So that's a big growth, you know?

So they need room to grow.

So that's what we did today, what we call maintenance.

I call it maintenance work.

In the oyster industry, they call it husbandry.

Some of the benefits of oyster farming are that we are letting the wild oysters come back.

So we're using farmed oysters to sell and supply the needs of the consumer, but at the same time, that lets the wild oysters rebound and come back 'cause their numbers are lower.

Another benefit of oyster farming is that we filter the water.

The oysters filter the water.

They eat algae, bacteria, and they make it into a protein that is great to eat.

A lot of people ask me, what ways can you eat an oyster?

What ways can they be consumed?

It's limitless.

You got oyster po' boys, fried oyster, oyster chowder, oyster stew, oysters raw on the half shell, roasted oysters, oysters like they do in New Orleans where they melt butter and cheese and reduce it down, barbecue oysters, you name it.

(seagulls calling) KEYRIS MANZANARES: Virginia oysters may be flourishing, but the Commonwealth and the nation are in a climate crisis.

Through its new Climate Center, George Mason University provides resources to help local communities deal with the current climate issues and prepare for future problems caused by climate change.

VPM News anchor Angie Miles has more.

ANGIE MILES: Penny Matthews says she and her husband have labored with love to restore and maintain their Accomack County home of nearly 50 years.

But now there are problems like more backyard flooding and... PENNY MATTHEWS: The hard surface road 48 years ago was fine.

Now in the last number of years continually it has flooded to the point I can't even drive down and I can't have company.

I get to church some days and can't get back home.

ANGIE MILES: She wants the county to address it.

PENNY MATTHEWS: I stay in, upset over it, all the time.

When I hear a storm's coming, "Oh, we're going to have high tides."

And people can't come to visit me.

I feel locked in, back here.

JESSICA STEELMAN: Miss Matthew's situation is very common on the shore.

As a matter of fact, there's about 33 miles of roads just like that.

So hers is just a small snippet of a very much larger regional problem.

ANGIE MILES: Jessica Steelman is the coastal planner for the quasi-governmental Accomack-Northampton Planning District Commission.

She has her eye on what residents need to safeguard against the effects of climate change.

JESSICA STEELMAN: My goal is to develop the community resilience and sustainability plan to be project focused and identify critical needs for the shore.

ANGIE MILES: Eastern Shore residents have long worked with nonprofits like the Nature Conservancy, and with various university partners, Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, William and Mary, to create workable solutions for sea level rise, flooding, erosion, and habitat protection.

Now they have another academic resource available in George Mason's new Virginia Climate Center, a set of faculty from across disciplines working together to offer protections for the whole state.

JIM KINTER: People have become accustomed to the climate that we've had for the many decades that we've been alive.

And the problem is, that that's not the climate we're going to have.

In fact, it's not the climate we have today.

We're trying to help people prepare for what we're calling the inevitable changes associated with global warming.

And that means building resilience to more severe weather.

It means understanding what the threats are, where the most vulnerable communities are, and helping them understand their threats, as well as come up with solutions.

ANGIE MILES: Kinter says all of Virginia is vulnerable because of climate change, but that the threats vary by region.

JIM KINTER: So for example, if you look at Eastern Shore, if you look at Norfolk and Virginia Beach, the Tidewater area of the Potomac, James and York Rivers, those are all being threatened by sea level rise.

Sea level rise is a consequence of global warming.

ANGIE MILES: This center exists to assist professionals like Steelman, as they create and implement climate resilience plans.

The Northern Virginia Regional Commission is already partnering with GMU's new center as northern localities deal with issues like flash flooding.

JIM KINTER: The rainfall in this area has already become considerably more intense than it was even 30 or 40 years ago, and we project that it's going to continue to get more intense for the next 30 or 40 years.

So that the flash floods that we might have considered to be a hundred year event back in the 1960s, will now be a 20 year event or even maybe a 10 year event.

ANGIE MILES: Urban areas of the state also contend with trapped heat that intensifies as the world gets hotter.

JIM KINTER: As the whole planet warms up as a result of carbon dioxide concentration, the cities are warming up even faster.

We have elderly populations and disadvantaged communities where heat is a big issue, not to mention the fact that people who have to work outdoors are susceptible to heat.

In the more rural parts, the western part of the state, there the issue is drought, where we, even though it's going to be raining more intensely when it rains, we will have more prolonged periods without rainfall and that will lead to drought.

And in our agricultural areas, that's a very serious threat.

ANGIE MILES: For local governments in coastal, urban, and rural areas of the commonwealth, The Virginia Climate Center intends over time to become a useful partner for as many communities as possible.

♪ KEYRIS MANZANARES: Communities across Virginia are impacted by destructive flooding, one of the most common and costly natural disasters.

Over the years, the Commonwealth has seen record setting flooding, and most recently, we've seen an increased risk for flash flooding and landslides.

I traveled to different parts of our state to see how Virginians are being impacted by flooding and what is being done about it.

KEYRIS MANZANARES This is the aftermath of Hurricane Camille in Nelson County.

Camille is one of only four category five hurricanes to ever make landfall in the United States.

JEREMY HOFFMAN: You have rainfall falling, an intense amount of rainfall falling on very steep topography.

So it's already going to be running off very quickly, happening overnight so everybody was taken by surprise.

And unfortunately, over the course of the whole storm, I think it's over 120 people wound up losing their lives in Virginia alone.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: On August 19th, 1969, Hurricane Camille dropped 30 inches of rain.

Virginians were unprepared for the destruction.

Forecasters had no idea it was coming.

And Virginians went to bed thinking that the hurricane that had destroyed southern states had died down to nothing.

They were wrong.

JEREMY HOFFMAN: We actually don't know the top sustained wind speeds from Hurricane Camille, simply because it destroyed all of the wind recording equipment in the landfall area.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Dr. Jeremy Hoffman, the David and Jane Cohn Scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia says, Hurricane Camille was the first time that the United States recognized that it wasn't just coastal communities impacted by hurricanes.

JEREMY HOFFMAN: Everyone in Virginia that I know that's lived here their whole lives, know a few names by heart.

You know?

Agnes, Juan, Camille, Gaston.

Some of those are just seared into the collective, cultural memory of Virginia because of their devastating impacts.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Hurricane Camille was thought to be a once-in-a-century storm, but then came Hurricane Agnes, which caused record flooding of the James River.

Both hurricanes, Camille and Agnes, left an everlasting mark on Virginia communities.

JEREMY HOFFMAN: In historical discussions of flooding, we tend to focus on hurricanes, but now the story is more, in recent memory, it's these really intense, short, non-tropical storms causing this same level, well maybe not the exact same level, but certainly a comparable level of devastation in communities around Virginia.

GOLDIE LOONEY: Actually, I had a cousin that was missing.

And she, her house, her car actually had gotten mud-sided.

And the family was worried, didn't know where she was at, but we found out she had went to a neighbor's house.

So she was found good.

But there's other people that were gone missing, that it took days to find.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: On July 12th, 2022, flash flooding in Buchanan County washed away houses and damaged more than a hundred homes.

On top of this destruction, 44 people went missing, swept away by floodwaters and mudslides.

Surrounding areas also felt the impact, but additional help arrived when Virginia Governor, Glenn Youngkin, declared a state of emergency.

KATIE CARTER: All disasters are going to have the first responders from that specific locality respond to that disaster.

And then when the state steps in, that's really when those localities have identified the need that they say, "Hey, we've exceeded our capabilities and what we can offer to this disaster.

We need state help."

KEYRIS MANZANARES: As rescue teams from across Southwest and Central Virginia pitched in, they were able to make contact with all of the missing people and bring them to safety.

Emergency efforts continued, helping those who had lost everything.

GOLDIE LOONEY: And it's still, they're not cleaned up there.

Their houses are gone, their homes are lost, their things.

And you wonder, if that's you, what would you do?

And every flood comes in and you got that fear left.

KEYRIS MANAZANARES: Goldie Looney says, flash flooding has caused significant damage to her home and she's lost irreplaceable items.

GOLDIE LOONEY: It's an everyday thing.

When it floods in our basement we had to replace it, hot water tank.

We've had a pond that I've had for over years; it's gone.

And my car; it's gone.

It's just not there no more.

And you just, you fear you have to get your car out before it gets to your driveway or you don't have a car.

You have no way out, man.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: On what they call, their "blue-sky" days, VDEM is focused on helping Virginians stay alert, aware, and prepared so they know what to do when heavy rain falls.

KATIE CARTER: First and foremost, know the forecast of what's coming and the impacts of that forecast.

You may hear one inch of rain, two inches of rain, but how does that translate?

What does that mean to me?

And sometimes you might have the ability to, one inch of rain means nothing, but maybe that one inch of rain falls over the course of 30 minutes, really fast, and over an area with poor drainage.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: What Looney and her neighbors endured is an example of sudden, catastrophic flooding, but more Virginia cities are dealing with flash flooding of varied intensity, as storms become more frequent and more powerful.

Experts tell us, Flash flooding is the most dramatic and the deadliest."

JEREMY HOFFMAN: So this is usually confined to a pretty small area getting an intense amount of precipitation in a very short amount of time.

And that can be a place like a city street or a canyon in a mountain.

And so, those surfaces can't absorb that water fast enough.

KEYRIS MANAZANARES: In Old Town Alexandria, the Potomac River is rising more frequently.

DAN MEDINA: If we were standing here during what is called a "king tide," which is one of those extreme events in the year, we'll probably be pretty much underwater in this spot right here.

And the water would go as far up on the street probably, maybe the next block over, halfway.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Dan Medina is the Storm Water Project Manager of Alexandria.

He says, "With nothing to block the water, it's getting into the drainage system and flooding the streets, creating a chronic problem."

DAN MEDINA: Streets are affected, of course.

Houses are affected, of course.

Water makes it into people's basements and whatever is there essentially useless.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: The city is considering a variety of solutions, from barriers to upgrades to their drainage system, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

The Hampton Roads area has endured a similar street flooding issue, but southeastern coastal communities are also dealing with the challenges of sea level rise.

Climate experts say, part of the problem is the land is also sinking.

At Old Dominion University in Norfolk, researchers are building a digital twin of Hampton Roads, using Geographical Information Systems, or GIS, which is a digital version of maps.

Professor Tom Allen says, "The digital twin is like having a time machine."

TOM ALLEN: So in our digital twin we can simulate flooding in the future, assess the impacts and redesign to reduce the effects or the hazards, the economic costs for example, of those.

So it's a way of using it to look into the future.

Then we're going to develop a prototype.

Think of it as a demonstration, and that will be tackling very common issues.

A flood event... How does emergency response prepare and respond to a flood event?

Well, we would rather train and simulate that than wait and see and do our experiments in real time.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: The digital twin is for the benefit of Hampton Roads and for localities across Virginia who know too well what flooding can do.

GOLDIE LOONEY: At this time, there's so many floods.

I just, no, I just want it to stop.

Just let 'em go.

It just, I'm tired of losing so much.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Transportation advances often come at the cost of fractured communities.

The government can use its right of eminent domain to take ownership of private property and tear apart tightly knit neighborhoods to make room for new roads and highways.

We explore the impact of urban infrastructure on the heart of communities.

Producer Pam Hervey reports.

GARY FLOWERS: The Jackson Ward was initially set apart from the rest of the city.

300 Black-owned businesses, seven Black owned insurance companies five Black-owned banks, before 1900.

Culturally, Jackson Ward was known as the Harlem of the South and so the hotels were cultural havens for the Duke Ellingtons, the Ella Fitzgeralds.

And so there was a plethora of restaurants and jazz clubs.

It was a very festive time.

PAM HERVEY: In the 1930s, the federal government began a discriminatory practice called redlining, which designated Black neighborhoods in major cities across the U.S. as risky investments, thereby denying Black residents certain financial services and the ability to gain wealth.

J. MAURICE HOPKINS: Redlining destroyed the whole Jackson Ward community.

Everything was in walking distance and it was a community, not like it is today.

PAM HERVEY: In 1954, the Virginia General Assembly approved the construction of the Richmond Petersburg Turnpike through the city of Richmond.

390 acres of public and private land across the city were taken using the government's legal right of eminent domain to build what was originally a toll road.

GARY FLOWERS: What is now known is Interstate 95, or as it was called then, the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, was deliberately placed in the middle of Black Wall Street, Jackson Ward, when only eight blocks away to the north was a natural, topographical ravine, known as the Shockoe Valley.

PAM HERVEY: By the time the turnpike was finished four years later, more than 7,000 residents were displaced, businesses closed, and schools demolished, most significantly in Richmond's Jackson Ward, where the highway split the community in half and disconnected families from easy access to stores, libraries, and banks.

J. MAURICE HOPKINS: If you went to school and lived on the other side of the turnpike, you could remain in that school.

But if you live on this side, which is north of the turnpike, you had to transfer from your school and go to another school.

GARY FLOWERS: There is no doubt of the proven injury to Black families in their homes lost, their schools lost, their businesses lost, their property lost.

PAM HERVEY: According to the Richmond 300 Master Plan for Growth, adopted by City Council in 2020, one of the six big moves is to reconnect the city by capping highways in order to reknit neighborhoods destroyed by the interstate.

MARITZA PECHIN: So my office is the Office of Equitable Development and I am the deputy director in charge of the office.

We work on implementing the Citywide Master Plan, Richmond 300.

Secretary Buttigieg came over to Richmond in December of 2021 to see for himself what the highway had done to Jackson Ward and to hear from community members directly about it.

PAM HERVEY: It was during this tour that Buttigieg heard firsthand about the Reconnect Jackson Ward project, a proposal to construct a freeway cap from First Street to Chamberlayne over the interstate, a project recently awarded $1.35 million of federal funding from the Reconnecting Communities pilot grant program.

MARITZA PECHIN: There was a lot of different people who were talking about wanting to cap over the highway.

And so the first thing we did was work on a feasibility study and that was just to understand, what's the canvas that we can work in to sketch out a reconnect project.

So we looked at kind of a big broad section from Belvedere to Second Street, trying to understand what, within that whole area, would be most feasible to cap over.

And we ended up narrowing it down from First to Chamberlayne / Brook Road as being the four segments that were most feasible.

PAM HERVEY: Constructing freeway caps in cities across the U.S. after the roads are built is a difficult and costly challenge.

Some believe it to be a worthy investment as it could provide new green spaces or offer community members easier access to jobs, groceries, healthcare, and other services.

DAVID LAMBERT: The Lambert family's been in this area since '60, probably before that.

My father, Senator Benjamin Lambert, had his optometry practice down here for over 50 plus years.

It's fantastic to see, one, the city is really embracing the change into a new era, and two, it's a healing process to help keep the healing from the past going to the future.

So my vision is really having a thriving, like a middle class African American or minority neighborhood, like they have in Atlanta, Georgia, that you can drive through it and it's like, "Wow, what's this over here?"

Restaurants and housing.

If you embrace it and build this group up and the area up, everybody wins.

MARITZA PECHIN: The community engagement was really robust and there were a lot of hard conversations.

The big thing that was one big theme that community members brought up over and over again was that the project needed to elevate and expand Black ownership, history, and culture.

They also talked a lot about reparations to address past harms and how to ensure that Reconnect Jackson Ward and another project we're doing, the Jackson Ward Community Plan for Redeveloping Gilpin, how those benefit Black Americans.

PAM HERVEY: According to the the feasibility study, the cost of the project could be anywhere from $100 million to $400 million.

This Reconnecting Communities grant will go to creating more accurate visual representations of what the freeway cap might look like and will continue the project moving forward.

MARITZA PECHIN: We know the canvas that we can paint within, but now we need to start painting, and that is where the Reconnect Communities pilot program funding will help us, to really draw out that vision for the community.

PAM HERVEY: But to some in the Jackson Ward community, moving the project into the future still means the city is overlooking the past GARY FLOWERS: A historically bisected section of any city would welcome federal dollars.

The question becomes, what would those federal dollars do and how will they address the past so that we may go into the future together?

J. MAURICE HOPKINS: Jackson Ward will never be the same.

It can't be, it's impossible.

You can't make this America the way it was.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: You've met locals from across the Commonwealth working to address the impacts of transportation infrastructure, protect our natural oyster habitat, and work on solutions to stop flooding.

Check out our website, vpm.org/focalpoint, for more about these stories and to share your story ideas.

Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.

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