In North Carolina, landscape architects at Coastal Dynamics Design Lab work with small towns on flood mitigation.
By Irina Zhorov
Hurricane Florence flooded about half of all buildings in Pollocksville. Courtesy Smith Hardy.
In 1993, Pollocksville, North Carolina, Mayor Jay Bender, who?s run the small town for more than 40 years, worked ?like crazy? to convince the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to allow him to build on the Trent River. The river runs through Pollocksville, and at the turn of the 19th century, ferries and barges plied its busy waters. Now the town?s waterfront was overgrown and in disrepair, and Bender wanted to reopen river access. The corps, however, refused him permission to build there because it was a wetland.
Not easily deterred, Bender contracted a group of prison inmates to cut back the vegetation until the riverside looked ?like a golf course.? It was summer, hot, and it hadn?t rained in weeks. Bender called the corps and told them to come, quickly, and reinspect. ?See"? he told them. It was bone-dry. They gave him the go-ahead. The city placed a historic train depot to serve as town hall on the spot, paved a parking lot, built a boat ramp, and called it Pollocksville Waterfront Park. Then came Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Matthew in 2016, and Florence in 2018. Each brought floods and destruction.

On a recent blustery afternoon, Bender visited the Waterfront Park, which was recently turned back into a constructed wetland, with a boardwalk and seati...