More than 30 North Carolina coastal communities have been awarded grants to boost their resilience to hazardous weather events.
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management announced Thursday the award of nearly $6 million in Resilient Coastal Communities Program grants to 32 counties, cities and towns along the coast.
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“Increasingly catastrophic storms like Helene and Chantal underscore how important it is for communities to take concrete steps to strengthen their resilience to hazardous weather events,” DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson said in a release. “These grants provide technical assistance and resources so that community leaders can identify the most important actions they can take to safeguard their residents, their infrastructure, and their economies.”
Of the grant money awarded, $1.9 million has been funneled for the completion of phases 1 and 2 of the Resilient Coastal Communities Program, or RCCP, which includes technical assistance in risk assessment and resilience planning and incorporating resiliency into Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, land use plans.
Those plans, which communities use to guide development and drive future public investments, will include resilience policies and projects that focus on highly vulnerable areas.
“Given that many existing land use plans are outdated and typically only designed to be relevant for up to 20 years, the RCCP aligns with the growing demand in North Carolina for updated land use plans to better anticipate future development and weather hazards,” according to a release.
During phases 1 and 2, the division contracts with third-party firms, which directly receive the funding, to provide technical assistance services to the local governments.
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Funding for those phases is going toward technical assistance for Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, New Hanover, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Pender and Tyrrell counties.
Municipalities for those phases include: Carolina Beach, Wilmington, Colerain, Holden Beach, Elizabeth City, Jacksonville, Manteo, Murfreesboro, Newport, Oak Island, Shallotte, Southern Shores and Southport.
More than $4 million in grants have been awarded to communities for phases 3 and 4 of the program to assist with engineering, design, construction and implementation of projects.
Nearly $3 million of that is being passed to five counties, including Beaufort, Carteret, Dare, Hyde and Pasquotank for the engineering and design of projects that will incorporate natural and nature-based elements like wetland restoration and living shoreline design. Municipalities receiving funding for engineering and design projects include Aulander, Belhaven, New Bern, Edenton, Elizabeth City, Holly Ridge, Plymouth and Washington Park.
Burgaw, Nags Head and Vandemere have been awarded a total of more than $1.2 million to complete phase 4 projects for stormwater management and flood mitigation. Those projects include building rain gardens and living shorelines to mitigate flooding and erosion.
The RCCP has awarded a total of about $16 million through 108 grants to 56 coastal communities.
