South Tidewater News

Norfolk Receives Additional Community Flood Preparedness Funds

The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) announced $51.7 million in supplemental awards for the third round of the Community Flood Preparedness Fund (CFPF) Grant Application. The City of Norfolk will receive more than $24.6 million to support its Coastal Storm Risk Management (CSRM) Project – the largest grant amount awarded in this round.

 

In conjunction with the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the CSRM Project was authorized in January 2022 as part of President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to strengthen port and waterway supply chains and bolster climate resilience. Under this plan, the City will receive nearly $400 million in federal funding to increase community resilience to flooding. As the nonfederal sponsor, the City is required to assemble a 35 percent match prior to the commencement of each project phase.

 

To support the nonfederal match efforts, the City’s Office of Resilience submitted a CFPF grant application for Phase 1A of the project, which is focused on the Ghent-Downtown-Harbor Park Flood Protection Barrier System. The $24.6 million in CFPF funding will support developments that provide protection from coastal storm surge flooding using structural and non-structural means. This phase provides the most natural and nature-based features (NNBFs) of any coastal flood protection project within the system, and within any single project in Norfolk’s history.

Phase 1A of the project will protect the most vulnerable populations within Norfolk, including assisted housing residents of the St. Paul’s Transformation Area that will include thousands of residents returning to the Tidewater Gardens community, as well as those currently residing in the Young Terrace and Calvert Square housing communities. The project will construct a hybrid flood barrier system consisting of a green levee extending eastward from the I-264 Berkley Bridge, beyond Harbor Park with hybrid I-/T-walls terminating at the soon-to-be-completed Ohio Creek Watershed flood protection project, itself a $112 million resilience project funded in part through grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The CFPF was established to provide support for regions and localities to reduce the impacts of flooding. DCR administers the Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund and grant program in cooperation with the Virginia Resources Authority.

Original source can be found here