Across the country, a quiet shift is underway in how towns and cities handle water. Instead of pouring more concrete or building higher levees, a growing number of communities are turning back to something simpler: wetlands. These soggy, unglamorous stretches of marsh and floodplain turn out to be remarkably good at absorbing storm surges, slowing river flows, and giving floodwater somewhere to go besides someone’s living room.
The projects below are not theoretical. They are funded, under construction, or recently finished, and each one reflects a community that decided restoring nature was worth the investment. Some are urban neighborhoods squeezed between highways, others are rural stretches of river basin, but all of them share the same basic bet: wetlands work.
1. Portland, Oregon: The Springwater Wetland Enhancement Project
In the Lents and Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhoods, Portland has spent the past couple of years expanding wetlands along the Johnson Creek floodplain. By expanding wetlands and restoring native plants, the project creates more space in the Johnson Creek floodplain to hold water in public green areas, which helps lower overall flood risks in the Lents and Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhoods. Construction ran from spring 2024 through the summer of 2025, giving the new plantings time to take root before the rainy season tested them.
The ripple effects go beyond flood control. The restored wetlands also improve water quality and provide vital habitat for sensitive wildlife, including frogs, salamanders, birds, and bats. Because the restoration has changed how water moves through the area, the city is now working with FEMA to update flood insurance rate maps, which could eventually lower insurance costs for nearby homeowners.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia: Pleasure House Point Wetlands Restoration
Pleasure House Point sits along the Lynnhaven River, and for years it functioned more like hardened shoreline than natural marsh. This project will return about eight acres back to its original tidal wetlands state, improving water quality and the health of the area’s ecosystem. The site entered a critical establishment phase in December 2025, when newly planted marsh grasses needed extra care to survive their first winter.
City crews have been watching the site closely since then. As the plants come out of dormancy, early signs of growth and greenery are visible across the restored wetlands, with more expected as temperatures continue to warm. An irrigation system has been reactivated to help the young plants along, and a chain-link fence will stay up for roughly another year so the marsh can mature without foot traffic disturbing it.
3. Coos Bay, Oregon: Tidal Wetland Restoration Along the Estuary
Coos Bay has become something of a proving ground for research on how wetland restoration actually performs under future flood scenarios. Scientists modeling the estuary found that wetland restoration is more effective at reducing tidal flooding at inland sites, with less flood reduction near the coast. That distinction matters for a community deciding where to focus limited restoration dollars.
The mechanism behind the benefit is straightforward once you see it mapped out. The researchers also found that restoration effectiveness was driven by increased flood accommodation space, allowing floodwaters to spread and not overtop levees near communities. In practice, that has meant repositioning levees to give marshland more room, effectively building a larger buffer zone for water to occupy before it reaches homes and roads.
4. Fairfield-Suisun, California: A Community-Designed Wetland
Rather than handing residents a finished plan, the Fairfield-Suisun Sewer District brought the community into the design process itself. Public meetings and surveys shaped three draft concepts for a wetland project spanning more than 100 acres near the Suisun Marsh. The pitch to residents was refreshingly direct about what the wetlands could do for them.
The wetlands have the potential to clean treated wastewater to meet new regulatory requirements before it flows to the Suisun Marsh, while also providing the community with green space and flood protection within a more than 100-acre area. Dozens of residents showed up to workshop sessions to weigh in on how the space should balance flood protection, habitat, and public access, a level of local input that shaped the eventual design concepts.
5. Harnett County, North Carolina: Stony Run Corridor Restoration
![5. Harnett County, North Carolina: Stony Run Corridor Restoration (Image Credits: Taken from US Census website [1] and modified by User:Ruhrfisch, Public domain)](https://nvmwebsites-budwg5g9avh3epea.z03.azurefd.net/climatecompass247/2eb41405907162f1c14c93892857dcd6.webp)
North Carolina’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint has been steering state money toward river basins hit hardest by recent storms, and Harnett County is one of the beneficiaries. The Carolina Wetlands Association will restore 0.81 miles of stream and 45 acres of floodplain wetlands along Stony Run in Harnett County. The project reconnects the stream to its natural floodplain, undoing decades of channelization that had left the waterway disconnected from the land around it.
This is part of a broader state push rather than an isolated grant. As directed by the North Carolina General Assembly, the Blueprint continues to allocate seventy-six million dollars in funding to support flood mitigation efforts in the Cape Fear, French Broad, Lumber, Neuse, Tar Pamlico and White Oak river basins. Stony Run is a relatively small piece of that larger effort, but it illustrates how floodplain wetland restoration has become a standard tool in the state’s flood response toolkit.
6. Woodfin, North Carolina: Riverfront Park and Stormwater Wetlands
Woodfin sits along the French Broad River, a basin that has seen its share of destructive flooding in recent years. As part of an ongoing park expansion, the town has woven flood resilience directly into its public spaces. Woodfin’s ongoing expansion and improvements for the park have provided an opportunity to integrate flood resilience in several forms, including riverbank stabilization and erosion control measures, stormwater infrastructure such as bioretention cells and stormwater wetlands and pocket wetlands, grading and native plantings.
The goal is not just to survive the next flood but to recover faster from it. These improvements will reduce riverbank erosion during high-flow events, improve the absorption of rainwater into the ground, slow peak flows, expand flood storage, and prioritize public safety. The work fits into Woodfin’s broader stormwater management goals, tying a single park project into the town’s larger comprehensive planning framework.
7. Bloomfield Township, New Jersey: Urban Wetland Restoration
Bloomfield Township took on a densely populated, urbanized stretch of land and turned it back into functioning wetland habitat. The project drew support from multiple funding sources, a sign of how seriously state agencies are treating urban flood resilience. Bloomfield Township, Strauss and Associates, ARH, and Princeton Hydro secured 1.76 million dollars in funding for this project from the New Jersey Freshwater Wetlands Mitigation Council and another several million dollars from NJDEP’s Office of Natural Resource Restoration.
What makes Bloomfield notable is the setting itself. Urban wetland restoration is harder than restoring rural marshland because space is scarce and existing infrastructure has to be worked around rather than removed. The township’s willingness to commit significant funding toward a project embedded in built-up neighborhoods suggests other dense suburban areas may follow a similar playbook.
8. Jacksonville, Florida: Hogans Creek Wetland and Upland Restoration
Jacksonville has identified Hogans Creek as one of its most pressing flood problems, and the city is now working with the nonprofit Groundwork Jacksonville on a restoration plan. The project is a top flood reduction priority for the City of Jacksonville, and will eliminate or reduce flooding for homes and other structures, while also providing enhanced green space and improving water quality in the stream, as Groundwork Jacksonville undertakes early planning stages for restoring wetland and upland habitat along Hogans Creek.
The project received close to three million dollars in funding to move from planning into early implementation. For a mid-sized Southeastern city dealing with increasingly heavy rainfall events, Hogans Creek represents a test case for whether wetland restoration can meaningfully protect an urban corridor without requiring a full buyout of the surrounding neighborhood.
9. Humboldt County, California: Prairie Creek Floodplain Reconnection
In Northern California, the restoration effort along Prairie Creek is notable for who is leading it. The California State Coastal Conservancy will restore high-priority salmon habitat in northern Humboldt County by reconnecting floodplains, adding channel complexity, and restoring vegetation in Prairie Creek. The work is happening on land with deep tribal significance, and the Yurok Tribe plays a central role in shaping how the restoration unfolds.
The work will support recovery of key salmon species and will provide an opportunity for the Yurok Tribe to implement restoration efforts on their ancestral lands. Beyond fish habitat, the reconnected floodplain does double duty for people downstream. It will also strengthen the climate resilience of both salmon and local communities by helping maintain cool stream temperatures and reducing flooding.
10. Massachusetts Coastal Communities: Statewide Priority Restoration Projects
Rather than a single town, Massachusetts has taken a statewide approach, funding wetland and river restoration across multiple communities at once through its Division of Ecological Restoration. In 2025 alone, the state moved quickly to get money into local hands. The Healey-Driscoll Administration announced the award of 839,288 dollars in grants to support priority restoration projects in eight communities, funded projects that focus on removing barriers in rivers and restoring coastal wetlands, and that will strengthen resilience to climate change, improve water quality, reduce flood risks, and restore wildlife habitat.
That round of funding did not stand alone. These awards are in addition to over two million dollars granted to seventeen projects in March, bringing the total of DER awarded funds for restoration priority projects in 2025 to over 2.8 million dollars. The specific work in these towns includes removing aging dams, restoring freshwater wetlands on former cranberry farmland, and replacing culverts that had been choking off natural water flow for decades, a combination that gives each community a somewhat different restoration story even under one statewide program.
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