A few years ago, the Pentagon chose Naval Station Norfolk as the first site for a pilot project to build climate resilience in vulnerable military communities.
The base was supposed to be one of four spots across the country assigned a new position called the Interagency Regional Coordinator for Resilience, or IRCR.
A coordinator was initially hired for the Norfolk base, but the position is now vacant. And there’s no sign of the program progressing elsewhere, lawmakers say.
More than a dozen congressional Democrats, including Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, and Rep. Bobby Scott, sent Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a letter on Monday asking about the status of the program.
Scott said protecting installations from flooding is a matter of national security, and Hampton Roads is a hotspot for both.
“I think people in this area are aware that military bases are subject to sea level rise, so if we're going to maintain these military assets, we have to make sure that we have a long-term plan,” he said.
“If a base is underwater, obviously planes can’t take off of Langley Air Force Base, and it's hard to operate a military base if you can't get around.”
The IRCR project was passed by Congress in 2023, after support from the Virginia delegation, including Kaine, Warner, Scott and Republican Rep. Rob Wittman.
“Given the federal government’s large footprint in Hampton Roads, there is a need for federal agencies to play a more active role in the region’s ongoing efforts,” the group wrote in a 2022 letter to the Biden administration.
An appropriate response to massive challenges, such as flooding, requires actions by a lot of different agencies, such as the Army Corps of Engineers, Environmental Protection Agency and local and state governments, Scott said.
“If no one is coordinating these efforts, there'll be total confusion, and probably nothing will get done,” he said.
The Department of Defense has highlighted the issue as a priority. A Pentagon analysis a few years ago found that more than two-thirds of the military’s mission-critical sites are threatened by impacts from climate change — including all of those in Hampton Roads.
Flooding was listed as a primary concern across installations, as well as extreme heat and potential drought.
"Climate change is a national security issue, and for the national security community, that declaration is not controversial. It's fact," then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said in a 2023 address at the U.S. Military Academy.
But these efforts have been abandoned by the Trump administration, which removed most mentions of climate change from federal websites. Hegseth said last year the Pentagon “does not do climate change crap.”
Scott said lawmakers want to learn about the status of the congressionally mandated program in order to move forward.
The DOD did not immediately return a request for comment Monday.
