Our Cost-Sharing Programs Protect Your Home And The Environment

Interested in restoring the shoreline along your riverside home? Thanks to generous funders, we can help share the cost. Living Shorelines and Shoreline Buffers help protect your property from erosion, restore wildlife habitat and help your home adapt to tidal flooding and sea level rise. Learn more and get started today!

What Living Shorelines & Shoreline Buffers Do

• Prevent Erosion And Land Loss by Creating Wetland Habitat
• Reduce Polluted Runoff From Your Property
• Discourage Geese From Entering Your Yard
• Attract Butterflies And Songbirds With Salt-Tolerant Native Flowers And Shrubs

How Living Shorelines Work

Living shorelines use plants, sand and other natural materials to create a stabilized coastal edge. An eco-friendly alternative to “hardened shorelines” like concrete seawalls, they help purify water, buffer floods, reduce erosion, store carbon and create habitat for wildlife.

What we’ll do

We’ll consider sharing restoration costs with any riverside homeowner that meets the following requirements:

1. Own a tidal shoreline in the Elizabeth River watershed that is eroding or at risk of erosion
2. Enrolled in the Elizabeth River Project’s free River Star Homes program
3. Agree to convert at least 60 linear feet to living shoreline
4. Agree to maintain the shoreline as a living shoreline and allow annual evaluation by Elizabeth River Project staff and/or project funder. See the following document for an example maintenance document: Living Shoreline Long Term Maintenance Plan
5. Join or renew as an Elizabeth River Project member upon completion of the installation

Living Shorelines

• Free site visit from our restoration staff and technical advice
• Project design with $100 deposit applied to project cost upon installation
• Restoration staff can design and permit the process on behalf of the homeowner
• ERP staff will install the project or work with a local marine contractor; Homeowner can also choose their own preferred contractor if necessary
• Cost-share 50% of total project costs up to $5,000 (Additional funding assistance may be available for qualifying projects)
• ERP staff will provide a long-term maintenance plan including 1-, 2-, and 5-year annual check-ins. 

Shoreline Buffers

• Free site visit and technical advice
• Project design with $100 deposit applied to project cost upon installation
• ERP staff will install the project or work with a local landscape contractor; Homeowner can also choose their own preferred contractor if necessary
• Cost share 50% of total project costs up to $2,000
• ERP staff will provide a riparian buffer long term maintenance plan
• Long term maintenance plan includes 1-, 2-, and 5-year annual check-ins. 

From the permitting process, they’ve been there every step of the way. For me, it was about bringing the water quality back up. And it saves your land.

Tom Ivey
River Star Home

How to Apply

• Application Period: Site visit list is currently full and will be re-opened to River Star Homes in Summer 2023. 
• Approval Process: Staff will review and respond to all applications after Summer 2023
• Target Installation: Fall 2024 through Spring 2025.

Are you already completing a shoreline restoration project on the Elizabeth River? Contact us to see if your design qualifies for cost-share assistance through reimbursement! River Star Homes Program Manager Barbara Gavin, bgavin@elizabethriver.org.