Re: Comments on Draft Virginia Disaster Assistance Fund Program Guidelines (September 17, 2026)

Wetlands Watch is a Virginia nonprofit working on nature-based responses to climate adaptation, flood resilience, and floodplain management. We appreciate the Department's work standing up VDAF quickly for communities affected by Tropical Storm Helene and the February 2025 storms, and we appreciate the opportunity to comment.

Our comments concern Part 2 (Disaster Mitigation), and principally the removal of the design and local permitting requirements for access bridges. We also identify several drafting errors that we believe the Department will want to correct before publication. Drafting errors are detailed in this comment letter first.

1. Technical corrections

Fencing and crop loss aggregate cap. The draft states an aggregate limit of $3,000.00 covering both fence and crop losses, and Appendix A repeats that figure. The August 2025 Guidelines set this aggregate at $3 million. Because the per-applicant cap is $50,000, the program as drafted would be exhausted before a single full award could be paid. We assume this is a typographical error and recommend correcting both instances.

Planning assistance provision for local governments and non-profits. Under "Eligibility & Funding Details," the bullet for Local Governments and Non-Profits reads: "Local governments may apply for planning assistance for bridge resilience and slope stabilization Funding covers up to 100% of eligible costs, capped at $50,000 per property." A sentence break appears to be missing, leaving it unclear whether the $50,000 figure governs planning assistance or bridge and slope stabilization assistance generally. If it governs planning assistance, it conflicts with the Disaster Mitigation Planning Assistance section, which caps planning at $7,500 for single-bridge repair or replacement and $10,000 for more complex flood resiliency projects within a $500,000 aggregate. If it governs assistance more broadly, it conflicts with the $100,000, $69,500, and $115,000 caps and with Appendix A. We also note that the bullet heading covers both local governments and non-profits, but the sentence refers only to local governments, while the Planning Assistance section lists nonprofit organizations supporting community resiliency planning among eligible applicants. This language carried over unchanged from the prior version. We recommend the Department restore the sentence break, state which activity the $50,000 cap governs, and reconcile it with the Planning Assistance caps and Appendix A. 

Missing cross-reference. The definition of "Eligible Activity" refers to activities "specified below under 'Examples of Eligible Activities”, but this section does not appear in the draft.

Livestock evidence requirement. The eligibility criteria for the fencing and crop loss subprogram are written conjunctively and include a requirement that applicants provide evidence that livestock were present within the 12 months prior to the Disaster Events. As drafted, a commercial crop producer with no livestock operation would be ineligible for crop loss assistance. We recommend the Department clarify that this criterion applies to fencing claims.

2. Restore the design requirement for funded access structures

The Department's Summary of Changes presents this substantial program change in a single table row. The prior column contains both the priority language and the requirement that bridge design and construction be permitted by the local government and meet the standards for a 500-year flood, where applicable. The new column contains only the directive to prioritize applications consistent with state or local floodplain standards.

We respectfully submit that these are opposite operations. Item 102, Paragraph P.2 directs the Department to give preference to projects consistent with floodplain management standards. Implementing that directive by removing the program's only floodplain design requirement does not carry it out.

The prioritization directive also cannot do the work the deleted provision did, for two reasons.

First, there is no applicable standard for these structures. The Virginia Floodplain Management Standards apply to state-owned or leased property and, as to design, establish lowest-floor freeboard requirements for buildings. They contain no design criterion for a bridge or culvert. The provisions nearest to the point, Sections 3.1.E.2 and 3.1.E.10, require that a project not increase flood elevations and that velocity, duration, rate of rise, and sediment transport remain unchanged. These are no-rise requirements. They protect the channel and adjacent property from the structure; they do not establish that the structure will survive. Most local ordinances in the eligible localities require National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) minimums and likewise contain no survivability criterion for a private access bridge. Under the draft, every bridge application is therefore equally "consistent," and the priority prioritizates nothing.

Second, the Summary of Changes confirms that the aggregate program-wide caps for Access Bridges ($1,000,000) and Retaining Walls ($350,000) were removed. Prioritization only produces different outcomes when applications compete for a limited pool. With those aggregates removed, a lower-priority application is funded regardless.

The consequences are not theoretical. North Carolina's private road and bridge program has seen its damage estimate rise from approximately $460 million to over $500 million, and state officials have attributed that escalation to hydraulic sizing, describing crossings formerly spanning 10 feet that now require spans of 75 feet. That state can fund roughly 300 of several thousand sites. A replacement crossing built without a sizing requirement is a cost the Commonwealth is likely to pay twice, and the second time the causal storm will not be a Disaster Event under these Guidelines, leaving the owner without recourse.

We recommend the Department restore its own prior requirement, with the feasibility pathway the Commonwealth has already developed. The Resilient Virginia Revolving Fund Notice of Funding Opportunity (July 2026) requires that design and construction be permitted by the local government and designed to maintain structural integrity during a 500-year flood where feasible, defines "feasible" to account for site constraints, public safety requirements, regulatory requirements, and reasonable cost, and requires any claim of infeasibility be supported by a signed certification from a Professional Engineer or Certified Floodplain Manager, supporting engineering analysis, proposed alternative resilience measures, and documentation. This framework answers the concern that a rigid standard would exclude smaller crossings or slow recovery.

3. Restore the local permitting requirement

We treat this as a separate and smaller request. Floodplain development permits are already required for these structures under local ordinances, and the Department's published application process from October 2025 already lists a floodplain letter among required Part 2 documents. Restoring the permitting condition imposes no new substantive obligation. It ensures that state funds do not flow to floodplain development that has not been reviewed by the local Floodplain Administrator, which protects the Qualified Community's standing under the National Flood Insurance Program and its Community Rating System participation.

4. The published application process should be reconciled with the new caps

The October 2025 application process document currently published at dhcd.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/DocX/disaster-assistance/vdaf-application-process.pdf, and linked twice from the program's main page, routes Part 2 bridge projects estimated at or above $50,000 and retaining wall projects at or above $29,000 to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, with projects below those amounts handled through the regional or planning district commissions under VDAF. Those thresholds are the prior VDAF caps.

If the thresholds move with the caps, then bridge projects between $50,000 and $100,000, and wall projects between $29,000 and $69,500, will shift from a program that requires a 500-year design and engineering certification to one that, under this draft, requires neither. Those are the projects where sizing and slope engineering matter most.

If the thresholds do not move, the published process and the Guidelines will conflict, and applicants will have no way to determine which controls.

We ask the Department to state in the Guidelines how Part 2 relates to the Resilient Virginia Revolving Fund for access structures, to confirm the referral thresholds under the revised caps, and to name RVRF in the non-duplication provisions, as the Guidelines already name USDA and VDACS in the fencing and crop subprogram. We also note that the DCR branch of the published process terminates in a box marked "TBD."

5. Add nature-based solutions to the Part 2 priority criteria

The eight priority criteria added to Disaster Mitigation Planning Assistance are a meaningful improvement over the single sentence in the prior version. However, they do not include nature-based solutions. Section 10.1-603.25 of the Code requires DCR to consider incorporation of nature-based solutions in evaluating RVRF projects, and the RVRF Notice reflects that. Part 2 funds slope stabilization, retaining walls, and channel-adjacent work where bioengineered approaches are frequently viable and carry lower lifecycle maintenance costs. We recommend adding a criterion for incorporation of nature-based solutions in accordance with the Code of Virginia requirement. 

6. Requests regarding the Summary of Changes

The Summary of Changes describes the 2026 revisions as reflecting new budget authority and expanded funding caps. The removal of the design and permitting requirements appears only within the comparison table and is not described in the narrative. We recommend the Summary state expressly that these requirements were removed, so that Qualified Communities and applicants relying on the Summary understand what has changed.

7. Comprehensive Mitigation Program Design

The draft carries forward the statement that a program design for Part 2 implementation projects will be published in the near future. Item 102, Paragraph Q.2.b required criteria and guidelines on or before December 1, 2025. The Department's public program description states that VDAF funds large mitigation projects protecting community infrastructure, but no such component is yet available. We encourage the Department to publish that design promptly, and note that DCR's parallel round for the same Disaster Events closes December 1, 2026.

8. Questions for the record

We would appreciate the Department's response to the following:

a. Were the revised Category A-equivalent funding caps developed in consultation with DCR? The $69,500 per-wall cap sits $5,500 below RVRF's $75,000 per-project cap, and the $100,000 per-bridge cap sits below RVRF's $175,000.

b. Is VDAF intended to be the primary or the secondary source for privately owned access bridges in localities eligible under both programs?

c. What rationale supported the removal of the 500-year design standard and the local permitting requirement?

Closing

We support the Department's decision to raise the per-unit caps. Our concern is not the amount of assistance, but the absence of any requirement that the funded structure be designed to withstand conditions commensurate with increasing flood risk. Restoring the Department's own prior language, with the feasibility pathway already in use elsewhere in the Commonwealth, would address that without slowing recovery.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Ian T. Blair
Policy Program Director
Wetlands Watch