The premier brownfield redevelopment conference in Virginia is hosted by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the City of Staunton.
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This session explores how Brownfields restoration can advance habitat, resilience, and water quality goals on active industrial waterfronts through strong cross-sector partnerships. Focusing on a project along an industrialized tributary to the Chesapeake Bay, the presentation highlights collaboration among private industry, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations to restore degraded shoreline and upland habitat on a constrained site with a history of contamination. After an earlier living shoreline failed, the team reevaluated site conditions and developed a more resilient approach that accounted for wave energy, sea level rise, and practical design limitations. The project also expanded beyond the shoreline to include revegetation and habitat restoration in other disturbed areas of the property, helping transform once-contaminated spaces into functional, attractive habitat. This session will discuss lessons learned about tackling Brownfields projects, partnership-building, adaptive design, funding coordination, and the opportunities and challenges of ecological restoration on working industrial lands.
