Pentagon: Essential Military Bases Threatened by Climate Change

Naval Base Norfolk - sea level has risen 18 inches. 

The Trump/Pence regime continues to deny the reality of global warming and climate change and is hell bent on rolling back regulations that protect the environment and seek to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere.   Now, Trump's acting Secretary of Defense - Jame Mattis resigned and was forced out early by Trump - has over seen the release of a report that notes that essential military bases are under threats from climate change yet, Democrats argue, tries to down play the severity of the danger and fails to meet the statutory requirements for the congressional mandated report.  A piece in The Hill looks the report as well as the alleged deficiencies in it which refuse to look at the imminent dangers faced by bases.  Joint Base Langley-Eustis referenced in the article is located in Hampton, Virginia and York County, Virginia.  I can see the Norfolk Naval Base located across the harbor from our bedroom window.   Here are highlights :

A Pentagon report reveals that more than two-thirds of operationally critical military installations are threatened by the effects of climate change over the next 20 years, including repeated flooding and wildfires.

The 22-page report released this week, titled the “Effects of a Changing Climate to the Department of Defense,” took a look at 79 “mission assurance priority installations” from the Army, Air Force and Navy that are based in the U.S.

Of the 79 installations, 53 are at risk for flooding now, and seven additional locations are at risk in two decades. 

“The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to Department of Defense missions, operational plans, and installations,” the report states.
The congressionally mandated document was delivered to lawmakers on Thursday but was not officially announced or released to the public. Numerous environmental organizations released the report publicly on Friday.

The report follows the November release of the National Climate Assessment, which was created by 13 federal agencies and found that climate change is expected to quickly interrupt the way people live day-to-day, with current efforts to stop it deemed insufficient.

President Trump, however, has continued to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activity and, at the time of the assessment’s release, said, “I don’t believe it.”

The Defense Department report, however, notes several examples of how military bases are already running into issues caused by climate change.

“Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, has experienced 14 inches in sea level rise since 1930,” with flooding at the base becoming “more frequent and severe,” the report states.

Navy Base Coronado in California, meanwhile, “experiences isolated and flash flooding during tropical storm events,” with the main installation reporting “worsening sea level rise and storm surge impacts that include access limitations and other logistic related impairments.”

Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) bashed the document as “inadequate, incomplete” and “partisan.”  Reed pointed out that the report did not include a list of the ten most vulnerable installations from each military service, as required of the document in the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. The report also was supposed to include a cost estimate to alleviate climate change risks at installations. 

“Unfortunately, under the leadership of the Acting Secretary, the Department transmitted a report that failed to adequately answer the litany of reporting elements required by law and instead produced an alphabetical list of 79 military installations. ... The report reads like an introductory primer and carries about as much value as a phonebook,” Reed said in a statement. . . . . under current leadership, the Department is treating climate change as a back burner issue.”

In a separate statement, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said the report “demonstrates a continued unwillingness to seriously recognize and address the threat that climate change poses to our national security and military readiness.” 

The report “fails to even minimally discuss a mitigation plan to address the vulnerabilities” and “failed to estimate the future costs associated with ensuring these installations remain viable. That information was required by law,” Smith said.

Global Warming is Already Flooding America's Coasts

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UPDATED 9-6-2016:  For more images of just how much of a reality global warming and rising sea levels are for the Hampton Roads area, check out the photos at AltDaily here.  As I said before, if you care about global warming and climate change, the ONLY option on election day is to vote a straight Democrat ticket. 

Having just dodged a bullet with Tropical Storm Hermine - the photo above shows Robinson Creek close to flooding into our back yard shown in the background - many of us in Hampton Roads know and understand that global warming's impact on sea levels is real and that it is happening now.  The second photo was taken by a friend in the Ocean View section of Norfolk from her home more than an hour before high tide.  Many other areas of Norfolk and even our neighborhood flooded and as of this morning, my sister in Virginia Beach is still without power.  What's really frightening is that Hermine was not even a major storm.  Sea levels ARE rising - at the Norfolk Naval Base, the level is a foot and a half higher than less than 100 years ago.  Yet despite this, we see Republicans ranging from Donald Trump on down saying that global warming and its impacts is a "hoax."  Here in Virginia, GOP legislators will not even allow the use of the term even as the economic powerhouse of the Virginia Port Authority and numerous military bases are threatened.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the reality that is already happening while the GOP remains in denial.  Here are highlights:

NORFOLK, Va. — Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through.

Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland.

And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains — and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets.

For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.

Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called “sunny-day flooding” — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.

These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water.

In coastal regions, that compounds the damage from the increasingly heavy rains plaguing the country, like those that recently caused extensive flooding in Louisiana. Scientists say these rains are also a consequence of human greenhouse emissions.

“Once impacts become noticeable, they’re going to be upon you quickly,” said William V. Sweet, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Md., who is among the leaders in research on coastal inundation. “It’s not a hundred years off — it’s now.”

[L]ocal leaders say they cannot tackle this problem alone. They are pleading with state and federal governments for guidance and help, including billions to pay for flood walls, pumps and road improvements that would buy them time.

Yet Congress has largely ignored these pleas, and has even tried to block plans by the military to head off future problems at the numerous bases imperiled by a rising sea. A Republican congressman from Colorado, Ken Buck, recently called one military proposal part of a “radical climate change agenda.”

As the problem worsens, experts are warning that national security is on the line. Naval bases, in particular, are threatened; they can hardly be moved away from the ocean, yet much of their land is at risk of disappearing within this century.

Because the land is sinking as the ocean rises, Norfolk and the metropolitan region surrounding it, known as Hampton Roads, are among the worst-hit parts of the United States. That local factor means, in essence, that the region is a few decades ahead in feeling the effects of sea-level rise, and illustrates what people along the rest of the American coast can expect.

The biggest problems involve frequent flooding of homes and roads. As the sea rises, hundreds of tidal creeks and marshes that thread through the region are bringing saltwater to people’s doorsteps.

As the national response lags, experts warn that the flooding is putting the country’s defense at risk.

Several studies have concluded that Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, is profoundly threatened by rising seas, as are other coastal bases. The Pentagon has managed to build floodgates and other protective measures at some facilities. But attempts by the military to develop broader climate change plans have met fierce resistance in Congress.

That was the case this summer, when an effort by the Pentagon to appoint officers to take charge of climate resilience led to a House vote prohibiting taxpayer money from being spent on the plan.

Many people in Congress, almost all of them Republicans, express doubt about climate science, with some of them promulgating conspiracy theories claiming that researchers have invented the issue to justify greater governmental control over people’s lives. So far, this ideological position has been immune to the rising evidence of harm from human-induced climate change.

Scientists had long hoped that any disintegration of the ice sheets would take thousands of years, but recent research suggests the breakup of West Antarctica could occur much faster. In the worst-case scenario, this research suggests, the rate of sea-level rise could reach a foot per decade by the 22nd century, about 10 times faster than today.

In 2013, scientists reached a consensus that three feet was the highest plausible rise by the year 2100. But now some of them are starting to say that six or seven feet may be possible. A rise that large over a span of decades would be an unparalleled national catastrophe, driving millions of people from their homes and most likely requiring the abandonment of entire cities.

Along those parts of the United States coast that are sinking at a brisk clip, including southern Louisiana and the entire Chesapeake Bay region, including Norfolk, the situation will be worse than average. On the Pacific Coast, a climate pattern that had pushed billions of gallons of water toward Asia is now ending, so that in coming decades the sea is likely to rise quickly off states like Oregon and California.

Read the entire article.  What can one do?  For starters, vote ignorance embracing Republicans out of office. For local homeowners, start water proofing your homes and make them flood resistant.  Personally, our next step will probably be to build a high berm around the perimeter of the backyard and then landscape it so that it's real purpose is camouflaged.  That, of course, will take time and money that many people simply do not have.

Water coming up the storm drain in front of the house (last October, water came half way up the driveway) 

Republicans Block Military's Effort to Plan For Rising Sea Levels

USS Harry S. Truman docking in Norfolk

Donald Trump may be the most hideous and frightening aspect of the Republican Party at the moment, but the sickness that has taken over the party is so widespread that it is at times almost unfathomable.  Take the issue of rising sea levels, something that is objectively occurring.  Here in Hampton Roads, the region is full of critical military bases ranging from the Norfolk Naval Base - the world's largest naval base, to Langley Air Base in Hampton, to Ft. Eustis in York County.  All, along with lesser bases, are threatened by rising sea levels.  Military leaders, being responsible and recognizing the need to be prepared for the future seek to make plans on how the bases will be protected as sea levels rise.  There's one problem: Congressional Republicans are blocking funding for the plans?  Why?  Because denying the reality of climate change and rising sea levels is a litmus test among the ignorance embracing Christofascists who no wield so much power within the GOP.   Rather than offend the knuckle draggers of the party base, these Republicans - who claim to support a strong military - would rather cripple critical bases in the future.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at the idiocy (the Daily Press carried a similar piece that looked at the threats to Langley and ft. Eustis).  Here are highlights: 

The latest scientific conclusion echoes others: It’s likely that sea level rise will eventually swallow huge swaths of Hampton Roads’ military installations, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists in a report scheduled for release today.

But if congressional Republicans have their way, the military will be blocked from doing anything about it.

Tacked on to defense spending bills passed by the House of Representatives: amendments forbidding the Pentagon from using federal dollars to study climate change or plan for its impacts.

Supporters say they want the military focused on enemies such as the Islamic State group, not rising seas.  Critics say flooding is a formidable foe as well.

“It’s kind of hard to attack the enemy when your base is underwater,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Southeast Virginia Democrat who voted against the ban.

[T]he Union of Concerned Scientists looked at 18 East and Gulf coast bases, concluding that the high tide line will creep inland in the decades ahead, stealing training and testing grounds, infrastructure and housing. Storms will intensify the troubles.

“By 2050, most of these sites will see more than 10 times the number of floods they experience today,” said Kristy Dahl, a co-author of the report. “In 2070, all but a few are projected to see flooding once or twice every day.”

Subsidence – a sinking-land phenomenon occurring in Hampton Roads – will speed things up around at least two local bases: The Dam Neck Annex to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach and Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton could lose up to 95 percent of their land this century.

Norfolk Naval Station will flood roughly 280 times a year by 2050 instead of the current 10, if sea level rise reaches the midrange of predictions.

[T]he Defense Department created its own climate change adaption plan. Dam Neck built a one-mile rock-core dune to protect the main part of the installation from storm surge. Langley Air Force Base built a shoreline seawall and door dams, and installed a pump system.

Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck sponsored one of the amendments that would put a halt to such preparations.  Scott hopes the amendments will die in the Senate.

Christofascists and their political whores in the GOP are a clear and present danger to America.

Obama Executive Order: Federally Funded Projects Must Consider Sea Level Rise

Parking lot at Norfolk Naval Base

Here in Hampton Roads, there are plenty of federally funded construction projects, many involving the region's military installations, the largest of which is the Norfolk Naval Base.  With sea levels rising due to global warming - a term the Virginia GOP doesn't want even uttered - it would be insane to continue to build new projects that do not consider future sea levels and merely look at current data.  Yesterday, Barack Obama recognized the idiocy of the past and current practices and signed an executive order that will make it mandatory to factor in projected future sea levels for any federally funded projects.  If followed, many projects will need to be revised and many projects could be scuttled.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

President Barack Obama on Friday signed an executive order requiring that all federally funded construction projects take into account flood risks linked to global warming. The order directs federal agencies to adopt stricter building and siting standards.  

The new standard gives agencies three options forestablishing the flood elevation and hazard area they use in siting, design and construction of federally funded projects. They can use data and methods "informed by best-available, actionable climate science"; build 2 feet above the 100-year flood elevation for standard projects and 3 feet above for critical buildings such as hospitals and evacuation centers; or build to the 500-year flood elevation.

The new policy does not make changes to the National Flood Insurance Program, which covers Americans in flood-prone areas with federally backed insurance provided they meet federal standards aimed at minimizing risks. But it will apply to grants the program provides, thereby affecting construction in flood-prone areas.

The standard also would make significant swaths of low-lying land ineligible for construction with federal money.

The White House move comes just days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a massive post-Hurricane Sandy report examining flood risks for 31,200 miles of the North Atlantic coast.

The research explicitly took sea level rise induced by climate change into account and finds: "Flood risk is increasing for coastal populations and supporting infrastructure."

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted coastal areas will face 30 or more days of flooding by mid-century because of sea level rise. According to the National Climate Assessment, more than $1 trillion of property and structures in the United States are at risk of inundation from sea level rise of 2 feet above current sea level - an elevation that could be reached by that same point.

While global warming is a contested political issue, more than 350 state and local governments have adopted flood standards along the lines of what the Obama administration is now requiring.

Sea Level Rise Putting America's Largest Navy Base at-Risk

If you listen to Republicans - e.g., Senator Inhofe - climate change and global warming aren't happening.  It's all a conspiracy in the minds of these lunatics.  The real conspiracy is between the Koch brothers and the oil and coal industries which seek to perpetuate the myth that climate change is not occurring and that humankind have no role in the visible changes occurring. As local TV-13 reports, the signs are clear at the Norfolk Naval Base - which boasts that it is the largest in the world - and Senator Tim Kaine says that it is time to address reality.  He and those like him who are in touch with objective reality will have an uphill battle given the GOP control of the Senate starting next month.  Here are article highlights:

Touring a flood-prone neighborhood blocks from the world's largest Naval base, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said Thursday, the time to act is now. Kaine is calling for a combination of needed infrastructure investments, and a reduction of U.S. dependence of carbon-based energy sources.

Probably the most sobering thing to me dealing with this sea level rise issue is the affect on the main Naval base," Kaine said. "Being on Armed Services, this is the center of Naval power in the world and such an important center for America. And when you contemplate the main road into the base eventually being underwater three hours a day in 2040, not because of storms but because of normal tidal action, by 2040, being underwater three hours a day, that was the one thing that made me snap back and say, I've got to take this seriously."

Kaine's comments follow an October Department of Defense report which concluded that Naval Station Norfolk would be at-risk, if, as many scientists have predicted, sea level rises 14 to 18 inches in the next 20 to 50 years.

"We have the time to make the investments to improve the infrastructure," he said. "We just really have to find these resiliency investments to protect this important key to America's national security."

The GOP likes to depict itself as the party of national security yet lunatics like Inhofe are acting as military leaders did on the evening of December 6, 1941.   Not wanting to admit/believe something doesn't make it not true.  At least not outside of the insane asylum known as the Republican Party.

flooded Navy pier parking lot

Sea Levels Rise While the GOP Remains in Denial

I've noted before the enormity of the problems that climate change and rising sea levels - two terms that are forbidden from use by the Virginia GOP - are creating for coastal Virginia.  In the world of the Virginia GOP, only the term "areas of repetitive flooding" is allowed.  The Virgina GOP, of course is not unique.  Similar denials of reality plague the GOP in North Carolina and other states as well.  And while the GOP and its Christofascist/Tea Party base refuse to face reality, cities and localities are stuck trying to devise ways to deal with the reality that the global climate is in fact changing and sea level rise and increased flooding is now the norm.  USA Today has an article that looks at the issue, with special emphasis on Norfolk, Virginia.  The issue is particularly relevant to me since the boyfriend and I live in a house that has flooded three times, causing us to expend large amounts of money to "flood proof" the house.  Here are story highlights:

 Flooding has become so common in this city, where water is the lifeblood, that residents talk about it in the supermarket. Home to the world's largest naval base, Norfolk sits on flat land — much of it filled-in marsh that's now at sea level and sinking. Add to that the sea-level rise from global warming, and the city faces what it deems a $1 billion-plus problem.

As the 10th part of its year-long series on climate change, USA TODAY traveled to Virginia's picturesque Tidewater region — bound by creeks, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay — to look at how rising sea levels are affecting America's coastal communities, where more than a third of its people and wealth reside.

The seas have risen and fallen before. What's new is the enormity of coastal development that will need to be protected, moved or abandoned. In this 21st century tale, an old fisherman isn't battling a large marlin (as in Ernest Hemingway's classic The Old Man and the Sea), but the cities are battling the seas.

"It's only going to get worse," says Benjamin Horton, professor at Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Science. "The rate of sea-level rise could more than triple in the next century," he says. "We're talking about rates we haven't seen in 6,000 to 7,000 years."

Most large U.S. cities are coastal, and some, like Norfolk, Charleston, S.C., and Miami, already flood at lunar high tides. Others, including New Orleans and New York, have been devastated by flooding from storm surges, the damage of which was magnified by sea-level rise.

"Many areas wouldn't have flooded without sea-level rise," Horton says, referring to the havoc Superstorm Sandy caused last year in the Mid-Atlantic.

In the past 100 years, it has climbed about a foot or more in some U.S. cities because of ocean currents and land subsidence — 11 inches in New York and Boston, 12 in Charleston, 16 in Atlantic City, 18 in Norfolk and 25 in Galveston, Texas, according to a USA TODAY analysis of 2012 tide gauge data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

How much higher will it go? Scientists don't know exactly but, depending on fossil fuel emissions, they project global sea level will rise about 1 foot to slightly more than 3 feet (or 39 inches) by 2100 . . . .

What's at stake aren't just beach McMansions for the rich but thousands of working-class homes as well as airports, military bases, seaports, power plants, oil refineries, bridges and highways.

"From a national security standpoint, the country has made huge investments, and those investments should be protected," says Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim, citing Norfolk Naval Station and the city's other military facilities. He says a major Category 2 hurricane could submerge his city, Virginia's second-largest, so it needs federal and state help because "it can't hold back the water on its own."

"There have been more coastal storms in the last decade than in the prior four decades combined," says Ronald Williams Jr., assistant city manager, adding there's also more frequent and rapid rainfall. He says the city was badly damaged by Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and after Nor'Ida's punch in 2009 it hired the Dutch engineering firm Fugro to identify solutions. The wish list: three new flood walls (the city already had one, built in 1970) and a new $650 million storm water management system.

The Defense Department is also involved. The Army Corps of Engineers did a three-year case study, released last month, that found Naval Station Norfolk's vital infrastructure won't survive the powerful storms and flooding expected in the latter half of this century. In another report this year, DOD said about 10% of its coastal facilities are at or near sea level and are "already vulnerable to flooding and inundation."

The Virginia Legislature ordered its own study but avoided using the potentially divisive terms "climate change" or "sea-level rise." In January, its "recurrent flooding" analysis, co-authored by Carl Hershner and Molly Mitchell of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, found sea level could rise more than average in Tidewater because of land subsidence — 1 to 2 feet by 2040 and 3 to nearly 8 feet by 2100.

Climate skeptics don't buy the global projections. "We don't know how much sea levels will rise or fall," says Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian research group funded partly by fossil fuel interests.
Michael Oppenheimer, geosciences professor at Princeton University, says there's little progress so far. "We're not even doing the cheap and easy stuff well," he says, citing the lack of early warning and evacuation plans. He cautions: "There's no final victory against the ocean."

What may help turn the tide, figuratively, is the coming surge in flood insurance costs, says Leonard Berry, director of the Florida Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He says higher premiums might do more than hurricanes to change people's attitudes about living by the water.

"There will be a slow exodus" from the coasts as property values gradually sink, predicts oceanographer John Englander, author of High Tide on Main Street. By century's end, he says, sea-level rise could dramatically transform U.S. coastlines, pushing them inland by hundreds of feet.

The embrace of ignorance carries severe costs.  The Christofascist/Tea Party base of the GOP not only threatens religious liberty for others but also impede government from taking needed, reality based actions.  The GOP in its current form is a menace. 

Our home in the November 2009 Nor'Ida storm. Since then, the first floor has been waterproofed up to 3 feet from the floor, marble floors installed throughout the first floor for easy cleanup, a whole house generator installed (to run pumps), and we've added 3 large industrial sump pumps that can pump the equivalent of a swimming pool every hour against standing water.  The cost: well into the 6 figures.

Army Corps of Engineers: Severe Storm Could Submerge Norfolk Naval Base

Republicans in both the Virginia General Assembly and Congress continue to deny that climate change is occurring or that sea levels are dangerously rising.  Indeed, the only way a study on what is happening in Virginia could get authorization through the the General Assembly was to have it study "repetitive flooding" with no mention whatsoever of "rising sea levels" or "climate change."  It's an example of taking the concept of sticking one's head in the sand to a whole new level.  And the current GOP statewide slate all deny that climate change is occurring, especially the rabidly insane Ken Cuccinelli.  Now, a new Army Corps of Engineers study reports that the Norfolk Naval Base - the largest naval base in the world - is at risk of being inundated in a bad storm. We've already seen entire piers go under water in lesser storms and the Corps says things could be far, far worse.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

Norfolk Naval Station's vital infrastructure wouldn't survive the kind of powerful storms and widescale flooding that rising seawaters are expected to bring by the second half of the century. And those conditions would likely get even worse in the following decades.

That's the conclusion of a three-year case study of the naval base, conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers, which analyzed computer storm models based on varying degrees of sea level rise.
It was one of four government-funded studies conducted nationwide to assess the impact of sea levels rising as much as 6 feet over the next 85 years.

"Military bases... are designed to be able to withstand hurricanes and flooding and that type of thing - to some extent," said Kelly Burks-Copes, a Corps of Engineers research ecologist who led the study of the base. . . . "But there was a growing concern that the military's infrastructure was no longer sustainable in the face of exacerbated storms and that climate change was likely to cause frequent storms, stronger storms, even if they are infrequent, more flooding," she said. "And they needed the questions asked: What were the risks and if there were risks, were there ways to reduce the risks?"

The results drive home the immensity of the challenge the Navy faces preparing for a long-term threat as budget crises and government shutdowns undermine even short-term planning.

The results found that at some point between a 1.5-foot and 3-foot rise of the sea, the Navy base - and much of Hampton Roads - would be submerged for hours or even days by a big storm. Without proper planning, the base would be unable to function.

The study identified weak points that can help the Navy plan as it replaces aging equipment and infrastructure, Burks-Copes said.  It can also help the Navy avoid spending money on short-sighted options that will force more spending down the road.

For example, since 2001, the Navy has been building expensive double-deck piers in Norfolk that are supposed to last for decades. They protect the utilities on the lower decks from water damage - based on current sea levels. That works now, she said, but because they weren't designed to address climate change, they won't be usable as long as expected.

"What is our backup if you lose Norfolk?" he asked. "What's plan B?"  Mayport Naval Station in Florida couldn't accommodate all of Norfolk's ships, and after rounds of base closings in recent decades, there are fewer Navy bases to choose from. Unlike the Army or the Air Force, which could just pull back and build an airfield farther inland, the Navy won't have those options.

"These questions are not or should not go away," Titley said. "The Navy will be front and center in dealing with this option whether it wants it or not."

On Tuesday Virginians have the choice of voting for a slate of candidates which doesn't even admit the problem exists or a slate that looks to the future and wants to prepare Virginia for the coming challenges.  Vote a straight Democrat ticket on November 5, 2013. 

Sunset Over the James River...the Winter Solstice

A neighbor took this photo last evening as the sun was setting over the James River where it flows into Hampton Roads and joins the Elizabeth River and several smaller rivers.  This time of year with the leaves off many of the trees, the boyfriend and I see the sunrise over the waters of Hampton Roads and can see the Norfolk Naval Base across the water to the south.

Sunrise Over Hampton Roads

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Living in Tidewater Virginia it is difficult not to be influenced by the abundance of water and, in general it adds a wonderful element to life - hurricanes and severe northeasters excepted, of course. The view above is from Chesapeake Avenue in Hampton (our street, which is sometimes referred to as "The Boulevard" since it runs for three miles along the north side of the road stead) looking south across Hampton Roads toward Norfolk.  Wikipedia describes Hampton Roads as follows:

The water area known as Hampton Roads is one of the world's largest natural harbors (more accurately a roadstead or "roads"), and incorporates the mouths of the Elizabeth River and James River with several smaller rivers and itself empties into the Chesapeake Bay near its mouth leading to the Atlantic Ocean.

Given that Hampton was founded in 1610 - that's right, a decade BEFORE the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock -  the body of water eventually took on the name "Hampton Roads" in 1755 when the Virginia General Assembly formally approved the name.  The image below is an satellite view of  the area.  Chesapeake Avenue runs along a section of the arch shaped shoreline of Hampton in the top portion of the image.  Our home is roughly half way between the Monitor Merrimac Bridge Tunnel to the left and the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel to the right in the photo.  The area to the south with the massive piers is the Norfolk Naval Base, the largest naval base in the world and source of many cute gay boys, and the adjacent Naval Air Station.  The seven mile long James River Bridge can be seen to the far left of the image.

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