NOAA and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) today announced a record investment in projects that will help communities prepare for increasing coastal flooding and more intense storms, while improving thousands of acres of coastal habitats.
The funding, in collaboration with the Department of Defense and private sector partners, provides more than $136 million to support 88 natural infrastructure projects in 29 states and U.S. territories.
The grants awarded through NFWF’s National Coastal Resilience Fund will leverage more than $94 million in matching contributions to generate a total conservation impact of $230 million.
When combined with eight grants announced earlier this year, the new grants will push the fund’s total amount awarded to more than $144 million in 2022.
Together, these 96 coastal resilience grants will leverage more than $97 million in matching contributions to generate a total conservation impact of $241 million.
This year’s awards include $93.7 million provided through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Additional federal agency funding comes from NOAA and the Department of Defense, and private funding is provided by Shell USA, TransRe and Oxy, with additional funding from the Bezos Earth Fund.
The natural infrastructure projects provide a buffer for communities against increasingly intense storms and flooding, while also improving crucial habitats for fish and wildlife species.
The projects will restore and create more than 16,000 acres of coastal habitats, including coastal dunes in Texas and California, saltmarshes in Louisiana and Virginia, oyster reefs along the Atlantic seaboard, and living shorelines to protect military facilities in Mississippi and Florida, among others.
Twenty-eight of these grants will fund construction activities for resilience projects, and 60 of them – 29 for planning and 31 for engineering and design – will advance community initiatives, with the ultimate goal of becoming shovel-ready resilience efforts.