Baton Rouge, Louisiana (October 13, 2026) – A restored marsh on Dauphin Island, Alabama, is doing more than creating habitat—it is measurably reducing flood risk for nearby homes and demonstrating reduced insurance risk. Results of the Graveline Bay Insurance Pilot led by the Community Resilience Center at The Water Institute found the marsh led to reductions of 9% to 18% in projected average annual loss for nearby properties.
Coastal communities are facing changes in both flood risk and flood insurance costs. The Graveline Bay Insurance Pilot findings highlight the importance of risk mitigation by showing that investments in coastal restoration can deliver quantifiable benefits for people and property—and highlighting ways those investments could be integrated into risk pricing.
“Along the Gulf Coast, environmental, economic, and community challenges don’t exist in separate lanes,” said Beaux Jones, President and CEO of The Water Institute. “A restored marsh can create habitat, reduce flood risk and potentially be reflected in insurance risk assessments and pricing. This report shows what is possible when you bring science, communities, and partners together to address interconnected challenges in ways that can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.”
The Graveline Bay marsh restoration project, funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund and completed in 2023 on the north side of Dauphin Island, Alabama, restored approximately 60 acres of marsh habitat. While the goal of the project was to restore marsh habitat, the Community Resilience Center saw an opportunity to ask an additional question: If the marsh is reducing flood risk for nearby properties, can that benefit be recognized by the insurance system?
With support from the Gulf of America Alliance through funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office for Coastal Management, the Community Resilience Center worked with engineering partner Moffatt & Nichol and reinsurance partner Munich Reinsurance America, Inc. (“Munich Re US”) to understand the potential impacts of the marsh restoration project on the flood insurance policies of adjacent properties.
“The most important thing we learned is that the marsh is working,” said Renee Collini, Director of the Community Resilience Center at The Water Institute. “It reduced wave heights and water levels, and the analysis shows that nearby properties are measurably less risky to insure. Now the question is how we make that risk reduction count. Communities are investing in projects that protect people and property, and we want to find pathways to positively impact insurance affordability.”
Moffatt & Nichol, which designed and engineered the marsh restoration project, used their existing monitoring data to model the new marsh’s impacts on wave heights and water levels for storms of different intensities and likelihoods, ranging from a two-year storm to a 100-year storm. The analysis found that the marsh reduced wave heights and water levels across a range of storms.
“We were proud to be part of the restoration of the Graveline Bay marsh to restore habitats harmed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as well as the effort to quantify measurable protection for nearby homes,” said Meg Goecker, Vice President, Moffatt & Nichol. “When we can quantify those benefits, coastal restoration becomes more than an environmental investment—it becomes part of how communities can think about reducing risk and building resilience over time.”
A reduction in estimated average annual loss does not guarantee an equivalent decrease in flood insurance premiums. However, the findings demonstrate that the restoration produced a quantifiable reduction in risk—information that is not currently directly incorporated into the National Flood Insurance Program’s Risk Rating 2.0 pricing methodology.
“Building more resilient communities starts with helping property owners better understand their flood risk and the actions they can take to reduce it,” said Raghuveer Vinukollu, Head of Climate Insights and Advisory at Munich Re US. “Risk mitigation investments not only strengthen community resilience but also support a more sustainable insurance system by creating a clearer connection between resilience actions and measurable reductions in risk.”
The Center worked with residents living next to the restored marsh to communicate the results for their properties and explore how that information could be used within the insurance process. The team also engaged actuaries, insurance and reinsurance companies, insurance advocates, researchers, catastrophe modelers, and other stakeholders to better understand barriers within the existing system.
Through that work, the Community Resilience Center identified promising policy pathways for incorporating locally developed risk information into Risk Rating 2.0 and other insurance decision making.
“Projects like this help us demonstrate how investments in coastal restoration can provide multiple benefits—not only for habitat, but also for people and communities,” said Christina Mohrman, Director of Strategic Planning and Partnerships for the Gulf of America Alliance. “Our Coastal Community Resilience Team is excited by the positive results of this pilot project and we hope to duplicate these efforts around the region. Building these connections is an effective way to strengthen the long-term resilience of Gulf Coast communities.”
Learn more about the Graveline Bay Insurance Pilot here.
ABOUT THE COMMUNITY RESILIENCE CENTER AT THE WATER INSTITUTE
A community center is a place where people go for resources, opportunities, and connecting with others. The Community Resilience Center at The Water Institute (the Center) strives to serve in this role for Gulf Coast communities on topics related to resilience. The Center works with communities to move beyond the assessment and study of risk towards the exploration, co-development, and implementation of community-focused strategies to increase resilience at every level: individual, household, neighborhood, city, state, and nationally. Learn more at www.thewaterinstitute.org/crc.
ABOUT THE WATER INSTITUTE
The Water Institute is driven by the mission to reduce the vulnerability of people, communities, ecosystems, and economies through transformative approaches to interconnected environmental and social challenges. As an independent, applied research organization, the Institute advances actionable research, technology, and planning to support science-informed decision making. The Institute serves as a thought partner, leveraging expertise in multiple disciplines and engaging across multiple sectors — government, private industry, academia, and communities. The Institute was founded in 2011 in the aftermath of devastating hurricanes and oil spills. Headquartered in Louisiana, the Institute draws on its roots in the Mississippi River Delta and the Gulf Coast, where water is both a strength and a vulnerability, to tackle challenges wherever they are. The Water Institute envisions a future where all of humanity can adapt and thrive alongside nature in a changing world. Learn more at www.thewaterinstitute.org.