A lot can change in 10 years, both environmentally and scientifically. In 2014, the Great Lakes were at the end of the longest low-water level period of record for the region. Today the Great Lakes are coming out of a period of historic high-water levels, which peaked in 2019. As communities continue to navigate the complexities of managing land use and development along these changing Great Lakes shorelines, and as people’s memories of past challenges fade, communities need reliable information and guidance to develop regulations and standards and plan for the future. 

Enter the new and improved Great Lakes Coastal Resilience Planning Guide. 

Originally developed by the Digital Coast partnership in 2014 to show how coastal communities are using science-based information to address coastal hazards such as flooding, shore erosion, and lake-level fluctuations, the latest version features updated content and a fresh new look. 

Updates you will find include:

• New Resilience Planning Section – The former Climate and Environment section has been reorganized into a more comprehensive Resilience Planning section.
• In-depth Community Stories – The original Case Studies and Local Stories sections have been combined into a single Community Stories section, which features new case studies showcasing ASFPM and Digital Coast partners’ work in four Great Lakes communities. 
• New Story Maps – As with the original Great Lakes Coastal Resilience Planning Guide case studies and success stories, the new story maps for each participating community chronicle the technical assistance, vulnerability assessments, and scenario-based planning processes undertaken as part of the Challenge while also sharing the data, tools and resources utilized in that process.
• Refreshed Resources Special Collection – The resources in the special collection has been completely refreshed to include more relevant and timely resources from the Great Lakes Coastal Resiliency Resources Database, Great Lakes Sea Grant Network, and NOAA Digital Coast, as well as updated links to key coastal resilience related organizations in the Great Lakes region.

Although there are many existing resources, data, tools, and platforms available to communities in the Great Lakes region, such as the Lake Level Viewer and Great Lakes Coastal Flood Studies, it can be difficult for coastal communities to navigate which resources to use to inform decision-making and help build community resilience. Now more than ever, questions about community resilience and how to plan for the challenges presented by future climate conditions are being considered at the community level. Having access to science-based information is vital to address coastal watershed hazards, such as flooding, stormwater, shore erosion, and lake-level fluctuations. Over the last decade, there has been an increase in development of high resolution data and robust decision-support tools to address the needs of Great Lakes coastal communities. The Great Lakes Coastal Resilience Planning Guide continues to seek to connect Great Lakes community officials with these maps, tools, data, organizations, and resources so that they can more easily replicate successful resilience efforts that consider natural hazards and climate change in local planning and management efforts.

This 2024 update to the Planning Guide was led by ASFPM, in partnership with APA, CSO, and the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network via Wisconsin Sea Grant, with funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s National Coastal Resilience Fund. To share your stories, feedback, comments, or content ideas please contact: info@greatlakesresilience.org.

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Approximately $575 million in funding is available through a new program being administered by NOAA’s Office of Coastal Management. The Climate Resilience Regional Challenge will help coastal and Great Lakes communities, including tribal communities in those regions, become more resilient to extreme weather and other impacts of the climate crisis.

There are two separate but simultaneous funding tracks. Funding for both tracks will be spent over the next five years. There is no matching requirement.

Track One: Regional Collaborative Building and Strategy Development – For efforts funded through this program, a partnership-focused, regional approach to building climate resilience is desired. Track One funding can be used to initiate new, regional-scale collaborative efforts or to advance existing partnerships. The goal is to collectively move more coastal communities closer to taking action, especially those that have been marginalized, underserved, or underrepresented.

Funding levels: NOAA anticipates selecting 20 to 25 proposals ranging from $500,000 to $2 million each. Total funding for all Track One awards may be up to $25 million.

Activities supported: The Regional Collaborative Building and Strategy Development fund is designed to support the following activities, including help with:

• Building and expanding regional partnerships.
• Engaging and partnering with tribes and marginalized, underserved, underrepresented communities.
• Assessing risk and vulnerability.
• Planning resilience strategies and adaptation actions.
• Building community and workforce capacity for climate adaptation efforts.

Track Two: Implementation of Resilience and Adaptation Actions – Reducing risk and vulnerability requires action. This track provides funding for applicants to implement coordinated adaptation efforts that support a holistic vision for resilience and build the capacity of the communities in a region to sustain efforts into the future, especially those communities that have been marginalized, underserved, and underrepresented.

Funding levels: NOAA anticipates awarding up to 15 proposals ranging from $15 million to $75 million each. Total funding available for all Track Two awards is up to $550 million.

Activities supported: The Implementation of Resilience and Adaptation Actions fund is designed to support regionally significant actions such as: 

• Acquiring vulnerable land.
• Building natural infrastructure.
• Improving public infrastructure’s resilience.
• Strengthening or protecting public access to coastal natural resources.
• Building regional capacity for ongoing actions that increase resilience.
• Planning and preparing for community-led relocation.
• Updating state and local codes and policies. 

 “The Challenge provides an unprecedented opportunity to work hand-in-hand with communities to develop tailored solutions that reduce risk and address coastal climate-related hazards,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, director of NOAA’s National Ocean Service. “This investment will help align resources at the federal, state, tribal and regional levels, while emphasizing access for underserved communities — ensuring that all Americans benefit from this transformative approach to building resilience.” 

State and local governments; tribes and tribal organizations; nonprofit organizations; and institutions of higher education are eligible to apply. Learn more about the Climate Resilience Regional Challenge funding opportunity and how to apply.

The first step is to submit a letter of intent by August 21, 2023. Get the details here.

The post NOAA Opens Applications for $575M Climate Resilience Regional Challenge first appeared on Association of State Floodplain Managers.

Under the newly created Great Lakes Environmental Justice Grant Program, the agency will select “principal recipients” that will receive funding from EPA to develop, implement, and oversee grant issuance and management programs focused on environmental restoration and protection projects for which Great Lakes underserved communities seek funding.

Qualifying non-profit organizations, institutions of higher learning (i.e., colleges and universities, including minority-serving institutions), state agencies, interstate agencies, federally recognized Indian Tribes and tribal organizations, and local governments are eligible to apply as principal recipients.

EPA will consider applications from potential principal recipients interested in setting up Great Lakes Environmental Justice Grant Programs to fund environmental restoration and protection work on a Basin-wide basis or on a smaller, more localized basis. Projects funded through this program must improve the environmental health of the Great Lakes or Great Lakes watersheds through a variety of means, including:

• restoring, enhancing, or protecting habitat;
• reducing non-point source runoff through, e.g., green infrastructure, riparian restoration, shoreline stabilization, or other stormwater/nutrient reduction practices that will improve water quality;
• connecting aquatic resources, e.g., dam removals, culvert replacements, etc.;
• controlling or preventing invasive species; and
• providing hands-on, place-based environmental educational opportunities in the Great Lakes Basin.

EPA intends to award the principal recipient(s) up to $20 million in funding to create a broad, basin-wide Great Lakes Environmental Justice Grant Program and up to $10 million in funding to create the more localized Great Lakes Environmental Justice Grant Programs.

Applications are being accepted through August 11, 2023. Learn more about the Great Lakes Environmental Justice Grant Program and the request for applications.

The post EPA Announces $30M for Underserved Communities in Great Lakes Region first appeared on Association of State Floodplain Managers.

The Great Lakes Regional Challenge is a project of the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), the American Planning Association (APA), the Coastal States Organization (CSO) and the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network via Wisconsin Sea Grant. The program is open to coastal communities in the U.S. Great Lakes with populations of 250,000 or less. 

In Summer 2023, the four communities will participate in a coastal resilience training and peer exchange workshop. During the workshop, attendees will receive intensive, hands-on training designed to boost their capacity to better plan for, prepare for, and adapt to extreme lake levels and associated weather and climate-related hazards. Teams will identify areas where ecological restoration (i.e. nature-based) efforts will have the greatest impact for social, economic, and environmental resilience to coastal flooding, and develop plans that identify and describe specific efforts to increase resilience and reduce coastal flood exposure in those areas. The workshop will include panel discussions, skill-building sessions, and strategy and modeling exercises.

In addition, each community will also receive one year of individual assistance to support their efforts. At the end of the year, the four communities will conclude the program with:

• One vulnerability self-assessment,
• A set of planning scenarios,
• At least one identified natural or nature-based project for implementation,
• One action plan,
• At least two identified potential funding source(s) to support its implementation,
• Access to a regional community of practice, and
• Improved hard and soft skills around coastal resilience.

This multi-year project, funded by National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s (NFWF) National Coastal Resilience Fund, provides key support to ASFPM’s mission to mitigate current and future losses, costs and human suffering caused by flooding, and to protect the natural and beneficial functions of floodplains – all without causing adverse impacts.

Extreme lake levels, whether high or low, cause complex and dynamic economic and water and habitat management challenges for Great Lakes region communities and states. In 2017, the Great Lakes marine economy employed 315,000 people and generated $9.1 billion in wages and $19.5 billion of gross domestic product. According to the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, current high lake levels are estimated to cost local governments in the U.S. and Canada more than $1.3 billion — $450 million on short-term fixes and $865 million on future planning and mitigation — and those numbers only include local public projects, not projects on state, federal and private lands. This program is intended to help smaller Great Lakes coastal communities improve their ability to address coastal flooding and other climate-related hazards.

As part of the larger Strengthening Coastal Communities Resilience in the Great Lakes Region Challenge program, ASFPM and its partners will host webinars and workshops at their conferences during the next two years, and will update the Great Lakes Coastal Resilience Planning Guide with new resources and local stories.

To learn more about the program, visit no.floods.org/GLChallenge. Please direct additional questions to Elizabeth Zinecker, ASFPM Project Manager, at ezinecker@floods.org.

The post Winners for Great Lakes Regional Challenge Announced first appeared on Association of State Floodplain Managers.

With changing lake levels, heavier precipitation, and more people living in flood-prone areas, an increasing number of coastal communities in the Great Lakes region are affected by flooding, disrupting coastal economies and degrading wildlife habitat.

ASFPM and its partners – the American Planning Association, Coastal States Organization, and
Great Lakes Sea Grant Network via Wisconsin Sea Grant – have designed the Strengthening
Coastal Communities Resilience Challenge to help communities develop policies and plans to improve their community’s resilience to coastal flooding, while building their knowledge
and understanding of the tools available to assist them.

The Challenge invites U.S. Great Lakes coastal communities with populations of less than
250,000 from NOAA-defined coastal shoreline counties to form multidisciplinary teams to
apply to join a one-year technical assistance program. Participating communities will leave
the program with:

• One coastal flooding vulnerability self-assessment,
• A set of planning scenarios,
• At least one identified natural or nature-based project for implementation,
• One action plan,
• At least two identified potential funding source(s) to support its implementation,
• Access to a regional community of practice, and
• Improved hard and soft skills around coastal resilience.

Full program details and a link to the application are available at no.floods.org/GLchallenge.
Applications are due November 9, 2022, at 11:59pm ET.

We will host a webinar on October 19, 2022, 4-5pm ET to preview the Challenge, provide
more information on the technical assistance that will be provided, and answer any questions
applicants may have. Registration for the webinar is free and open now.

ASFPM will notify teams if they were selected or not the week of December 5, 2022. Teams will
be publicly announced the following week on December 12, 2022.

Questions? Contact Jenna Moran at jenna@floods.org.

This project is funded by a NFWF National Coastal Resilience Fund Grant.

The post Technical Assistance Program to Help Great Lakes Coastal Communities first appeared on Association of State Floodplain Managers.