Washington Coastal Resilience Project

The Washington Coastal Resilience Project (WCRP) was a three-year (2016-2019) effort that increased the state’s capacity to prepare for natural events that threaten the coast, including sea level rise, storm surges, wave impacts, and shoreline erosion. The project team consisted of Washington Sea Grant, the Washington Department of Ecology, the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, The Nature Conservancy, and eleven additional institutional partners.

Objectives

1. Fill critical information gaps and improve the communication of risk about coastal hazards and related climate impacts that hinder planning and action in the state’s coastal communities.
2. Increase the state’s capacity to support coastal resilience by leveraging existing programs, authorities, policies, and capital investment programs through targeted updates to state guidance, capital investment funding criteria, and lessons learned at the community level.
3. Support three resilience pilot projects in Washington’s coastal communities by incorporating improved coastal hazards and climate change technical guidance into local plans and project designs, and leverage lessons learned to make statewide guidance more practical and helpful at the community level.
4. Employ targeted and strategic outreach to Washington’s coastal communities to support additional implementation of improved technical information and program capacity.

Summary of the Project

The WCRP theory of change depended on creating stronger capacity to support community-based plans and projects using existing policies, programs, and funding mechanisms. Over the course of the three-year project—as well as a 12-month extension period—the diverse team of WCRP partners worked with scientists and engineers, pilot communities, state agencies, NGOs, and others to develop innovative, localized sea level rise projections and then applied and tested them to accomplish community resilience objectives. 

Along the way, the team deployed a vigorous outreach campaign to ensure that the new sea level rise projections and approaches to using them are accessible and understood by coastal planners in Washington. Over the course of the project, the team hosted more than 50 workshops and meetings that engaged nearly 800 people. The WCRP also strengthened institutional partnerships in the state, improving information resources, technical assistance, and funding programs to support locally led resilience projects. Furthermore, the team expanded the website of the Washington Coastal Hazards Resilience Network to make the products of this project widely available and to provide additional information resources for coastal residents interested in strengthening the resilience of their communities.

Resilience Pilot Projects (Objective 3)

Tacoma: The project team assisted the City of Tacoma and Tacoma Metro Parks to incorporate the advanced sea level rise (SLR) projections in planning the redevelopment of public lands along the Ruston Way waterfront. The products from this effort comprised a presentation and maps used at a public workshop in April 2018. The planning process is ongoing. 

Island County: The project team, along with UW students, assisted the Island County Planning Department to develop a strategy for addressing SLR in the County’s shoreline master program and a framework for community-based resilience planning. The work resulted in the Island County Sea Level Rise Strategy Study and the Washington Community-Based Coastal Resilience Planning Guidebook. It also contributed toward the Island County Shoreline Master Program and Sea-level Rise Workshop. Additional information on the SLR workshop is available online from Island County’s Marine Resource Committee by clicking here. 

The SLR projections and communications toolkit provided by the WCRP are now being used alongside the Strategy Study and workshop results in a continuing public planning process to update the County’s shoreline master program.

Estuary and Salmon Restoration Program (ESRP) community of practice for nearshore habitat restoration: Working with ESRP partners, the project team reached out to restoration planners and practitioners in the region and held two workshops about the application of sea level rise data to coastal habitat restoration projects. The team found that a guide to using SLR projections in coastal restoration projects was of more interest than a single project case study and tested some ideas about that approach.

Consequently, the WCRP team modified the scope of work and developed a guidance document applicable to all coastal restoration projects and ESRP’s grants program: Sea Level Rise Considerations for Nearshore Restoration Projects in Puget Sound.

Strategic Outreach (Objective 4)

Although outreach was an important element of all project objectives, strategic outreach specifically targeted the improvement of outreach methods and materials for Washington’s coastal communities.

The WCRP team partnered with NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management and Washington’s Coastal Training Program (housed at the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve) to develop the Washington Climate Change Adaptation Course Series, which includes two new courses related to sea level rise. These courses are “Adaptation Planning for Coastal Communities,” a locally relevant climate adaptation course, and “How to Communicate About Sea Level Rise,” which was designed around the use of the newly developed SLR projections and took advantage of the early discussions with resilience project partners, Island County and the City of Tacoma. The WCRP team also partnered with the Shoreline and Coastal Planners Group to host the “Understanding and Using Sea Level Rise Projections” workshop at Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen.

To provide communities with examples of successful risk reduction actions, the WCRP team developed a case history database of local hazards resilience projects. The team initially sent out a survey to gather stories on hazards adaptation, which received nearly two dozen responses. Next, the team reached out to respondents for in-person interviews to further inform the drafting of case studies on selected projects. The database is now realized as the Washington Coastal Hazards Risk Reduction Project Mapper. New case studies are continually added to the Mapper.

The Coastal Hazards Resilience Network (CHRN) website was overhauled in order to recreate the site as an online communications toolkit for self-identified resilience ambassadors, providing information and outreach materials to support community engagement in resilience issues. This work was based upon outreach with the coastal Marine Resource Committees, community members, agencies, professionals, and local project proponents. The site continues to support CHRN professional members while including features that orient non-professionals to coastal hazards and how to get involved in hazards mitigation and management.

Partners

Washington Sea Grant led the project in close collaboration with the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Coastal Zone Management Program, UW’s Climate Impacts Group, and The Nature Conservancy.

The following institutional partners also participated: The City of Tacoma, Metro Parks Tacoma, Island County, King County, University of Oregon, UW Department of Earth and Space Sciences, UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, Padilla Bay National Estuary Research Reserve, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Estuary and Salmon Restoration Program (ESRP), and the U.S. Geological Survey. 

The NOAA Office for Coastal Management West Coast Region provided valuable technical and administrative advice to the project team. The project was primarily funded by NA16NOS4730015 from the NOAA Regional Coastal Resilience Grants Program. Additional funds were provided by the State of Washington as well as the Pacific Northwest Climate Impacts Research Consortium (CIRC).