Tangier Island

Jenna Portnoy at The Washington Post wrote an interesting piece today about Tangier Island and Sen. Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat. Despite the fact most islanders didn’t vote for Kaine when he ran for governor or senator, he’s determined to help them deal with their plight. Which means getting Congress to cough up some money to deal with the face that the island is vanishing into Chesapeake Bay.

The island is about 12 miles from the Virginia and Maryland coasts in the Chesapeake. In fact, more and more of it is literally in the bay. Each year eight or so of the island’s remaining 832 acres dip beneath the waves. This gradual submersion has been going on more than a century and a half. But coastal erosion and rising sea levels from climate change have sped up the process, and for the 450 residents of the island the prognosis is … problematic.

You may remember that back in June, Pr*sident Trump called the island’s mayor, James Eskridge, after CNN aired a story on the island’s troubles during which Eskridge said: “Donald Trump, if you see this, whatever you can do, we welcome any help you can give us,” Eskridge said, later adding, “I love Trump as much as any family member I got.”

Trump did what he does best—bluster. He phoned up Eskridge to tell him not to worry, the island would still be there centuries from now. He promised the red tape would be cut and regulations pushed out of the way to get a jetty or even an entire sea wall built to rescue Tangier and its residents. He also invited the mayor to come up to Washington some time for a chat. Eskridge invited Trump to visit the island.

The mayor hasn’t gotten an official invitation to the White House so far. And Trump hasn’t visited the islanders who gave him 87 percent of their votes last November. The only thing he has done that relates to the island’s welfare, in fact, is propose cutting money from the 34-year-old Chesapeake Bay Program, a federal-state partnership designed to clean up the bay’s pollution that imperils the very ecosystem that the islanders depend on for their livelihoods. Congress has stuck $73 million back into the budget for the program. But that money runs out the end of this month.