Virginia Beach officials defend wetlands restoration and banking decision as critical to flood‑protection projects

Councilman Josh Schulman hosted a public update on the Pleasure House Point wetlands restoration on the evening of the meeting, saying the city moved quickly to create a wetlands mitigation bank needed for coming flood‑protection projects.

Lede: Councilman Josh Schulman and Public Works Director LJ Hansen said the restoration produced a portion of the tidal wetland credits the city needs for upcoming bond projects and argued that building an on‑site bank was the most reliable way to secure credits that otherwise were not available locally in time.

Nut graf: Officials told residents the project was planned through a multi‑year master plan, permitted by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2018, and recorded as a banking instrument in 2020. Hansen said tidal wetland credits are scarce, subject to hydraulic‑unit (HUC) constraints and timing rules, and that the city faced a practical choice in 2025 to develop its own bank rather than risk being unable to obtain nearby credits when projects required them in 2026.

Hansen described the site’s history and the banking rationale. He said the site had been used as a spoil site in the 1970s and was later acquired and master‑planned for conservation and restoration. The Army Corps issued a permit in February 2018, and the city recorded a banking document in 2020; those steps established the regulatory path for generating tradeable wetland credits. Hansen said the city needed about 2.7 acres of tidal wetland credits for multiple projects and that New Mill Creek credits were outside the city’s hydraulic unit code, which can limit whether the Corps will accept them for local impacts.

On costs, Hansen said council appropriated $12.21 million for the project and that the city has spent $7.6 million to date. He presented a cost comparison the city had prepared showing that, under assumptions at the time, purchasing credits off‑site might have cost about $10.42 million. He said the city’s on‑site execution reduced per‑credit cost to about $950,000 for eight credits and left about 1.05 credits for future projects.

Council authorization and timing: Hansen said he asked council to authorize the city to move forward and that the council authorized the project on Oct. 10, 2024. He emphasized that credits must be created and released on a schedule and that regulatory timing and supply scarcity drove the decision to proceed.

Officials emphasised monitoring and staged credit release. Hansen explained the banking instrument releases credits in stages: roughly 25 percent at first, 50 percent after one year of monitoring and, over ten years of monitoring, the full credit amount if the site meets performance standards. He said approximately two acres of credits are currently available and that the city expects to reach about 90 percent of eligible credits by the following December.

Ending: Officials said the restoration will remain a protected conservation area, that Parks and Recreation will maintain the natural area preserve, and that monitoring and maintenance are budgeted through the ten‑year period. Hansen invited technical follow‑up questions and said staff would continue to provide updates to the public and to project partners.