Norfolk District Projects

The project calls for replacing the obsolete structure with a split leaf eastbound 2-lane with sidewalk and westbound 3-lane, low-level, fast acting, pit bascule bridge located south of and parallel to the existing bridge’s centerline. The approach roads include all transportation network tie-ins on either side of the bridge, including intersections. This south alternative is less likely to disturb existing utilities. The provision of a 5th lane allows smooth traffic movement at the intersection without unreasonable stacking of traffic onto the bridge.

The Norfolk District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is conducting three initiatives relating to the presence of oyster in the Chesapeake Bay: (1) Construction of projects designed to establish sustainable breeding populations of native oysters in sanctuaries in Virginia; (2) Creation of a joint Norfolk District-Baltimore District Chesapeake Bay Oyster Restoration Master Plan to outline a long-term plan for large-scale native oyster restoration; and (3) Preparation of an Oyster EIS that will evaluate ongoing native restoration efforts and the possible introduction of a non-native oyster species.

The study area encompasses the Virginia waters of the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States. This research development initiative intends to better understand the contributions of Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) to the restoration efforts of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.

The study area is the New Point Comfort area of the County of Mathews, Virgina, which is located in the Middle Peninsula Planning District. feasibility report, completed in March 2007, examined the federal interest in ecosystem restoration and concluded that additional study may be appropriate under the Corps Regional Sediment Management (RSM) program.

The Chowan River Basin is approximately 130 miles long and drains an area of 5,000 square miles in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. Sixteen counties or portions thereof are in the Chowan River Basin: Southampton, Greensville, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, Lunenburg, Nottoway, Dinwiddie, Sussex, Prince George, Surry, and Isle of Wight in Virginia and Chowan, Gates, Bertie, Hertford, and Northampton in North Carolina. On May 2, 2007, the United States Congress House Transportation and Infrastructure committee provided a survey resolution authorizing the corps to review conditions and recommend whether flood damage reduction, environmental restoration, navigation, erosion control, and associated water resources in the Chowan River Basin are in the federal interest. A reconnaissance study would evaluate ways to protect the water resources of this highly-productive basin, with particular emphasis on restoring wetlands and forested buffers lost from erosion and flooding, reducing flood damages throughout the basin, improving navigation, and determining the Federal interest in conducting a more detailed feasibility study.

The Norfolk District is working with the City of Richmond to help develop and prioritize water resources needs that may be addressed by the Corps of Engineers Environmental, Flood Control, and/or Navigation business lines.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the Virginia Port Authority (VPA) are partnering to construct the Craney Island Eastward Expansion project. Originally designed for a 20 year life span, USACE has been studying ways to extend the life of CIDMMA since the 1970s. In 1997 the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure authorized Norfolk District to prepare a Feasibility Study to determine the feasibility of expanding Craney Island into the east, and to consider rapid filling of the new dredge material site to provide an area for a new marine terminal. The Feasibility Study, concluded in 2006, determined that the existing CIDMMA would reach capacity in 2025 and the VPA would run out of cargo handling capacity in 2011.

The Craney Island Dredged Material Management Area is a 2,500-acre confined dredged material disposal site located on the north side of Portsmouth, VA. The Craney Island Dredged Material Management Area is an active U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works project. The site is served by a perimeter road approximately 6 miles in length located near the shoreline. The site has a primary containment dike approximately 8 miles in length and two division dikes that divide the site into three sub-containment areas. Each sub-containment area has two spillways located on the west side of the containment site and the south containment area has a single telescoping weir located near the center of the containment area on the west side. Recreational user facilities are limited to several unpaved visitor parking areas. There are no other facilities provided for visitors.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates and manages the 2,500-acre dredged material area at Craney Island in Portsmouth, Virginia. These operations include mosquito surveillance and control activities. These mosquito surveillance and control activities are in accord with the Department of Defense guidelines on reducing the risk of mosquito-borne diseases and have the added benefit of reducing nuisance mosquito populations at Craney Island and the adjacent areas of Portsmouth, Virginia.

ODEC proposes to construct the Cypress Creek Power Station, a supercritical pulverized coal/biomass steam power electric generation facility. The applicant's preferred site for the Cypress Creek Power Station is a 1,600-acre property in Dendron, which is located in Surry County, Va. The Dendron site is located in the Blackwater River watershed. ODEC has also identified a 1,200-acre property in nearby Sussex County, Va., as an alternative site. The Sussex site is located in the Blackwater River and Nottoway River watersheds.

The Dismal Swamp Canal and the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal form alternative routes along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (AIWW) between the Chesapeake Bay and Albemarle Sound. The canals and the rest of the waterway are maintained and cared for by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The AIWW provides pleasure boaters and commercial shippers with a protected inland channel between Norfolk, Virginia and Miami, Florida.

The Dismal Swamp is maintained by fixed weirs across the drainage ditches to restrict the flow of water out of the swamp and inward to Lake Drummond, located in the middle of the Dismal Swamp. The water exiting Lake Drummond through a feeder ditch is used to maintain the level of water in the Dismal Swamp Canal, a portion of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. An investigation of the urban flooding problems in Chesapeake, VA, and its relationship to Corps projects will determine if mitigation measures are feasible to minimize future flood damages, environmental restoration, and other water resource related problems in the vicinity of the Dismal Swamp.

The Norfolk District’s Operations Branch oversees more than 70 federal navigation dredging projects in Virginia. Tasks include planning, designing, budgeting, scheduling and executing Operations and Maintenance in both deep-draft and shallow-draft channels. They serve as the District’s principal point of contact with local sponsor, project users, maritime, dredging industry and technical interests, local and state governments and other Federal agencies for all matters pertaining to the operation and maintenance of Federal navigation channels for both commercial and recreational users. Recent navigation dredging projects include both Lynnhaven Inlet and Rudee Inlet in Virginia Beach.

This system contains hydrographic surveys and depth information produced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk District. The surveys and depths are of navigation channels maintained by the Corps. This system is designed to provide pilots and agencies with additional information to support official navigational aids.

This ecosystem restoration project is located along the main branch of the Elizabeth River in the City of Norfolk approximately 90 miles southeast of Richmond, Virginia.
This project is one of seven projects, recommended under the Elizabeth River Environmental Restoration project, which seeks to improve the aquatic habitat throughout the Elizabeth River Basin. The Old Dominion University Drainage Canal project is designed to ameliorate the adverse impacts of past waterfront activities through the restoration of historic wetlands by filling and grading with clean wetland sediments and planting with native wetland plants including Spartina alterniflora, S. patens, Baccharis halimiflorlia, and Iva frutescens. The project will provide for the restoration of 0.6 acre of a healthier tidal ecosystem.

The project area encompasses the entire Elizabeth River Basin, which includes the cities of Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach, within the Southside Hampton Roads area of southeastern Virginia. The Scuffletown Creek area, a tributary to the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River, is located on the east bank approximately two nautical miles from the Eastern Branch/Southern Branch confluence in the City of Chesapeake. The Paradise Creek area is located on the west bank of the Southern Branch directly across the Elizabeth River from Scuffletown Creek. The recommended plan (National Ecosystem Restoration Plan or NER) for addressing the environmental problems and needs in the Elizabeth River Basin, as presented in detail in the Final Feasibility Report and Environmental Assessment dated June 2001, is environmental restoration which would involve a combination of both sediment restoration at Scuffletown Creek and wetland restoration at seven different sites throughout the river system. A second feasibility investigation is also being considered for sediment remediation at Paradise Creek, another tributary of the Southern Branch.

The restoration of wetlands at the Scuffletown Creek site will convert a degraded 0.08 acre fringe area dominated by rubble fill into a 0.4 acre emergent fringe wetland that will provide additional wildlife habitat, a connection between two adjacent marshes, increased runoff filtering capacity and stabilization of the shoreline. The site is to be included in a proposed public waterfront park as part of the city’s Poindexter Street Development plan.

Fishermans Cove is located in the northeast section of the City of Norfolk. The waterway is connected to the Chesapeake Bay by Little Creek Channel, a Federal project used extensively by the US Navy for deepwater access to the Little Creek Amphibious Base. The recommended plan provides for a channel approximately 4,650 feet long from the existing Federal channel in Little Creek into Fishermans Cove, with a channel depth of 10 feet at mean lower low water and channel width of 100 feet. The purpose of this project is to reduce navigational difficulties in Fishermans Cove.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is responsible for cleaning up Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS), which are properties formerly owned, leased, possessed, or operated by DoD. In 1987 the Former Nansemond Ordnance Depot (FNOD) became a matter of public concern when a piece of crystalline TNT was found at the Tidewater Community College, Portsmouth Campus. This initiated extensive historical research, investigations, testing and removal actions. As a result of these findings, in 1999 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency placed this site on the National Priority List.

National Capitol Area active and retired military and their families will be the beneficiaries of a new community hospital being built on Fort Belvoir, Va., just south of Washington, D.C. The hospital’s conceptual design calls for a 1.2 million square foot, seven-level community hospital, including medical administration areas. The design includes 120 in-patient beds, a 10-bed intensive care unit, a 10-bed behavioral health inpatient unit, a cancer center, an emergency department, a pharmacy, an operative services center with 10 operating rooms, diagnostic centers such as pathology and radiology, and modular clinic space dedicated to outpatient services. Additional space is planned for future outpatient expansion. In addition to the square footage of the facility itself, the project includes two parking garages and surface parking for 2,600 parking spaces, a helipad, ambulance shelter and dedicated central energy plant.

Gathright Dam and Lake Moomaw, a Corps of Engineers facility, the construction of which was completed in 1979 and put in operation in 1982, is located 43 miles from the mouth of the Jackson River, 19 miles north of Covington, Virginia. The facility presently provides flood control, water quality (low flow augmentation), recreation and trout habitat on the Jackson River. Since the project’s inception, the demographics of the James River Basin have changed considerably. On a periodic basis, the James River Basin incurs drought conditions and, four times since 1999 low flow augmentation flows have been reduced during droughts at the request of the Commonwealth of Virginia to preserve conservation storage in Lake Moomaw. Widespread development throughout the basin has added pressure to maintaining/improving the overall environmental quality and recreational opportunities of the basin’s water resources. The feasibility study will evaluate Gathright Dam and Lake Moomaw’s ability to alleviate the impacted environmental conditions along the river from Gathright Dam to the James River. A Reconnaissance Report was approved on February 18, 2005 by the Corps' North Atlantic Division office. The reconnaissance report addressed several problems and concerns articulated by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries including: benthic impairments, low dissolved oxygen concentrations, elevated nutrient levels, and cold and warm water fisheries. A Project Management Plan has been developed and a consensus garnered on the general scope of work for the next phase of the study, the feasibility phase. When funding is provided, the Project Management Plan will be finalized and a Feasibility Cost Sharing Agreement will be executed to initiate the investigations into different alternatives for the project area.

The study area includes a 25-foot-deep and up to 600-foot-wide and 2,770-foot-long turning basin adjacent to the Richmond Deepwater Terminal, about 5 miles downstream from the City of Richmond.

Lake Anna is a 13,000 acre man-made lake located in Louisa, Orange and Spotsylvania counties, in central Virginia. Stretching for 17 miles in length and with a shoreline of over 200 miles, Lake Anna is the second largest lake located entirely in the state of Virginia. High levels of PCB's, combined with relatively high levels of mercury, arsenic, lead, zinc, cadmium, copper, and sulphur, by-products from years of gold and metals mining now contribute to unacceptable water quality and degraded fish and wildlife habitat conditions.

The study area is the Lynnhaven River Basin, which is located in the City of Virginia Beach, Virginia. The Lynnhaven River, with its three branches, the Eastern, Western, and the Broad Bay/Linkhorn Bay, encompasses an area of land and water surface of nearly 64 square miles. The watershed, representing one-fourth of the area of the City of Virginia Beach, performs vital functions for the City and its residents. This study identifies four specific areas of concern to be addressed in future studies and actions with the Corps of Engineers. These areas of concern are water quality, tidal wetlands, submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and siltation.

Shoaling is severe at the entrance of Nassawadox Creek and vessels are having difficult problems accessing the creek. Vessel damages, increased vessel operation and maintenance costs, human safety, and vessel transportation costs are among the concerns attributable to the creek’s shoals. Dredging is needed to provide safe navigational access. The study found that a 7’ deep channel 10,500 feet long from the public landing facility at Bayford to the Chesapeake Bay to be the National Economic Development and the Locally Preferred Plans. The selected plan requires an initial removal of approximately 85,000 cubic yards of sand material with 25,000 cubic yards of maintenance material to be removed once every 9 years on average.

USACE and their contractor, Shaw Environmental, Inc., are conducting a two-year, two-phase Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study of the refuge. The first phase began in January and runs through April. The second phase of fieldwork is scheduled for January through April 2010. These timeframes were chosen to avoid wildlife disturbance on the refuge.

The fieldwork consists of limited shoreline munitions clearance so the team can safely access and collect geophysical information within the interior of the site, using sub-surface metal detecting. The team will also survey selected site areas to reveal where munitions of concern are present in the subsurface, and collect and analyze environmental samples to determine if chemical contaminants have entered the environment. This process will help identify areas that may require future cleanup work.

This $62 million dollar project consists of constructing Phase 1 of an incrementally funded Base Realignment and Closure sensitive compartmented information facility. Joint Use Intelligence Analysis Facility J is required to implement BRAC 05 recommendations to collocate intelligence operations (approximately 1000 personnel: 800 from DIA and 200 from NGIC) to provide a secure facility to enhance command and control; to promote acquisition, assimilation, and analysis of real-time intelligence; and to enhance organizational productivity, inter-agency connectivity and inter-operability.

The study is located in Pocomoke Sound on the Chesapeake Bay side of the Eastern Shore in the northwest portion of Accomack County, adjacent to the Town of Saxis. A project would consist of the placement of 8 segmented offshore breakwaters along 6,000 feet of intertidal Saxis Island shoreline to restore historically vegetated aquatic and wetland habitat, as well as open beach, a critically needed habitat for the Federally-threatened northeastern beach tiger beetle, which has been found in small numbers on the present remnant beach.

The Norfolk District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the City of Chesapeake, Va., are partnering up to restore 30,000 square feet of wetlands along Scuffletown Creek. This project is authorized under Section 206 of the Water Resources Development Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-303) as amended.

The study area is located on the Chesapeake Bay side of the Eastern Shore in the northwest portion of Accomack County, adjacent to the Town of Saxis. The existing Federal navigation project provides for a channel 7 feet deep at mean low water and 60 feet wide from that depth in Pocomoke Sound to the mouth of Starlings Creek; a turning basin of the same depth, 100 feet wide and 1,100 feet long inside the entrance; and a channel 60 feet wide connecting the turning basin with a harbor of refuge, 7 feet deep at mean low water, 200 feet wide and 500 feet long. A project would provide a stone revetment and spur jetty at the mouth of the creek to control the shoreline erosion and to protect the boat harbor and navigation facilities from wind-induced swells.

Tangier Island is located in the Chesapeake Bay approximately 90 miles southeast of Washington, DC, and is entirely within the political boundaries of Accomack County on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Two Army Corps of Engineers projects are located in the vicinity of the proposed project. One is a navigation channel to the Chesapeake Bay that provides a channel 7 feet deep at mean lower low water and 60 feet wide from the anchorage basin at the Town of Tangier, northwesterly to the Chesapeake Bay, a total length of approximately 3,820 feet. The second is a seawall that provides over 5,700 feet of shore protection to the island's west coast, south of the navigation channel.

The Rappahannock River Basin, at 2,800 square miles, is the fourth largest tributary basin in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The specific study area encompasses the upstream tributaries, including the Rapidan River. The Rapidan River Basin, at 600 square miles of area, begins with the confluence of the Upper Rappahannock River, a distance approximately 14 miles west of Fredericksburg. The Feasibility Study will evaluate environmental restoration initiatives in the upper reaches of the basin. Opportunities include creating improved spawning and foraging areas, restoring riparian habitat, and improving water quality.

This project will restore inter tidal wetlands to formerly used dredge material disposal areas, consistent with the goals established by the Commonwealth of Virginia in its Coastal Basin/Chesapeake Bay tributaries strategies.

Completed in 2002, at a cost of $143 million, the project is comprised of pump stations, a sea wall, sand dunes and widened beach berm which protects property along the Virginia Beach. Constructed of metal sheet pile, concrete and reinforcing steel, the sea wall stretches for nearly four miles starting at Rudee Inlet to the south and continuing north to 58th Street. Where the sea wall ends, a system of strengthened sand dunes continues from 58th Street to 89th Street protecting homes and businesses.

Project information coming soon.