The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) recently announced the FY 2017 annual solicitation of applications for financial assistance through the Virginia Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund (VCWRLF). This year for the first time governments can apply for financial assistance in order to directly establish living shorelines themselves or to establish a local government funding program for individual citizens to establish living shorelines on their properties to protect or improve water quality.  
 
Completed applications (4 copies) must be hand delivered or postmarked by 5:00 p.m. on July 15, 2016.  DEQ plans to evaluate the applications received and present a proposed funding list to the State Water Control Board in September/October 2016.  For more details regarding the programs offered, the application process or assistance in completing the application, please contact Walter Gills in the Central Office or your closest regional representative (see VCWRLF contact list).
 
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 SAGE member Maya Buchanan's article Allowances for evolving coastal flood risk under uncertain local sea-level rise is now online.  

Abstract:  "Estimates of future flood hazards made under the assumption of stationary mean sea level are biased low due to sea-level rise (SLR). However, adjustments to flood return levels made assuming fixed increases of sea level are also inadequate when applied to sea level that is rising over time at an uncertain rate. SLR allowances—the height adjustment from historic flood levels that maintain under uncertainty the annual expected probability of flooding—are typically estimated independently of individual decision-makers’ preferences, such as time horizon, risk tolerance, and confidence in SLR projections. We provide a framework of SLR allowances that employs complete probability distributions of local SLR and a range of user-defined flood risk management preferences. Given non-stationary and uncertain sea-level rise, these metrics provide estimates of flood protection heights and offsets for different planning horizons in coastal areas. We illustrate the calculation of various allowance types for a set of long-duration tide gauges along U.S. coastlines."

SAGE member Pamela Judge thought the episode of FrontLine called the "Business of Disaster" was very interesting.  She said  it discusses insurance companies payments and government programs (HUD, FEMA, and Build it Back) in relation to rebuilding after Katrina and Sandy.  If you are interested in watching the link is below: 
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365762232/