Marine construction on the lower Chesapeake

You need to file either way, but often not to hold a VMRC permit at the end of it. Virginia exempts a noncommercial private pier built by the waterfront owner, as long as it stays inside the navigation line, the pier is no wider than six feet, finger piers no wider than five, any L or T head plus floating platforms come to 400 square feet or less, and VMRC finds it is not a hazard to navigation.

The catch sits in the statute itself. The exemption applies after an application has gone to the Commission for review, so the paperwork still goes in. What comes back is a determination that no permit is required, rather than a permit. Anyone telling you a private pier means no paperwork is reading it wrong. Va. Code § 28.2-1203(A)(5)

One application that reaches four reviewers at the same time: your local wetlands board, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, the Department of Environmental Quality, and the Army Corps of Engineers. It saves you filing four times. It does not merge the four decisions, and any one of them can come back with questions.

Since 1 September 2025 the Corps receives every Virginia request, and the Regulatory Request System at rrs.usace.army.mil is the only route in.

We can provide assistance with the permit process. What that covers depends on the job, so the honest answer is to call and ask about yours rather than to promise you a blanket yes on a web page.

What is fixed is the mechanism. Virginia and the Corps both allow a contractor to prepare and file the Joint Permit Application as the property owner's authorized agent, on an authorization you sign. The application stays in your name either way, because the Commonwealth requires the riparian owner to be the applicant.

VMRC publishes a target rather than a promise: 45 to 60 days for simple projects, 60 to 90 for more complicated ones.

Your local wetlands board runs on a clock set in law. It has to hold a public hearing within 60 days of receiving a complete application, and decide within 30 days of that hearing. If it misses those, the application is deemed approved. Boards meet monthly and each one publishes its own schedule. Va. Code § 28.2-1302

The Corps does not publish a target for this kind of work, so we will not invent one for you.

Virginia law now starts from living shorelines. The Commission may permit only a living shoreline approach unless the best available science shows one will not suit that site, and even where it does not suit, living shoreline elements have to be worked into the design as far as possible.

That does not ban a bulkhead. It puts the burden on you to show a living shoreline will not hold that particular bank. Rock sits in an easier place: stone is named in the statute, and riprap can qualify as a living shoreline component under an expedited general permit, where a hardened vertical bulkhead cannot. Which way your shoreline should go depends on how much energy it takes and what is behind it, and that is a conversation to have standing on it. Va. Code § 28.2-104.1

The Commonwealth charges a $100 processing fee with the application. If the project uses state-owned bottomland, the permit issuance fee is $100 where the project costs under $10,000, $300 between $10,000 and $500,000, and $600 above that. Va. Code § 28.2-1206

Your county charges its own wetlands and Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area fees on top. They are published on each county website and they move, so check them rather than budgeting off this page.

The tidal waterfront of eastern Virginia: the lower Chesapeake Bay, the Middle Peninsula and the Northern Neck. Private shoreline and commercial marina work both.

If your property sits outside that, call and ask. We will tell you straight whether we can get to it.

Call (804) 555-0142, Monday to Friday between 8:00 and 5:30, and we will come and look at the shoreline.