This story was originally published by Inside Climate News.
After years of planning to deal with climate change on some military bases in the country, the local government officials in North Virginia are looking for a financing for the climate adjustment, which may occur or not.
Robert Lazaro, executive director of the regional commission of Northern Virginia, said that climate change is a reality that is most manifested in rainstorms that throw centimeters in the region. “It goes without saying,” he added. “We see it all the time.”
The NVRC, a collection of governments from the Arlington districts, Fairfax, Prince William and Stafford, received a financing of around 2.4 million dollars from the office of the local Defense Ministry for the review of the Resilience check at several locations. All sit along the Potomac River: Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, the US Army Garrison Fort Belvoir and the Marine Corps Base in Quantico.
The financing has been in two phases of the Mirr process, which were completed and 129 “strategies” and about 50 “guidelines” were determined to deal with increasing temperatures, increasing seas and large volumes of precipitation. Military installations are required by law to plan the resilience.
In view of the efforts of the Trump administration to reduce federal expenses and to lift the work on climate change, it remains to be seen whether the financing is progressing for a third phase that could deal with energy requirements.
Since North Virginia with an increased load on the electrical network from the development of data centers and hotter and colder seasons that air conditioning and heating need, the Mirr Phase 3.0 can help to prevent power outages on the military's wastewater and drinking water treatment systems, said Lazaro.
The North Virginia Commission was “entitled to apply,” said Lazaro, referring to a vote that the Commission had taken over in January because President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's cuts intend to bring the Pentagon to the Pentagon for the Efficiency Department.
“No idea,” added Lazaro, about the amount required for the third phase, since the request is expected to be completed in the “late spring or early summer”.
The US military, for which Trump and both parties have uncompromisingly supported, identified climate change as a “threat multiplier”.
“Improvements in master planning and the planning and design of the infrastructure are recognized as crucial for the reduction of current and future susceptibility to the risk of climate for installations, missions and operations worldwide,” the Ministry of Defense concluded in a report from 2021.
While the plans for checking resilience provide a number of ideas for dealing with the climate events, Lazaro explained that these plans identify additional grant financing under the heading of the integration of environmental protection for environmental protection (Repi “, which should contribute to the design of adaptation projects.
The Northern Virginia Commission has already received such Repi subsidies for two projects. One of them is to remedy the floods at the Gate of Quantico, which prevents service members from driving into the facility. The other deals with an eroding Shoreline project with the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences next to the Quantico airfield, which houses the president's helicopters.
These designs should then lead to a third round of financing with the federal government that actually implemented the adjustments, although the Commission has stopped looking for this financing of the helicopter airfield after the Navy decided to look at another program, said Lazaro.
According to the national oceanic atmospheric administration, which also reduces Trump, the Quantico area from 3.12 inches in 2020 could be increased by more than 3.4 inches by more than 3.4 inches via a 24-hour rain event.
“It is getting worse and worse,” said Skip Stiles, a high -ranking advisor to the Environmental Group's wet area, while he asked whether the rainwater infrastructure of the system can deal with the increase.
Data from the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences show that Quantico had about 200 meters of coastal erosion between 1937 and 2021 near the runway on which the president's helicopters were housed.
Erosion is a process that can naturally appear from waves that plunge against the bank. In areas of Virginia, Donna Milligan, deputy researcher at VIMs, it takes place faster, but on Thursday morning in a department for environmental qualities in VIMs in a Virginia working group on living coasts.
Charles Paullin
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Inside climate news
Further south in the Norfolk region in the Hampton Roads region in Virginia, where the East Coasting of the US Marine and the world's largest marine station in Hampon Roads Planning Planning Commission are planned in Hampton Roads Planning.
The rapid increase in sea level in connection with land lowering makes the area of Norfolk the existentially threatened region of the east coast through climate change.
“These are real problems that need to be treated,” said Lazaro, regardless of people's beliefs, to climate change. In 2022 he pointed out the military contribution to the military on the 54 -billion dollar.
In North Virginia, the design phase subsidies include the financing of places and the state government, added Lazaro. “It was a great partnership,” he said, recognizing the collaboration at all government levels and supply companies such as Dominion Energy.
When asked whether the Commission would look for local or state funds to compensate for the difference whether federal financing would be avoided for future efforts, Lazaro said: “I think the work would go on somehow.”
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