Marconi Beach, Wellfleet
BOSTON – The Baker-Polito Administration will make $8 million available through the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program.
The program provides communities with funding and technical support to identify hazards, develop strategies to improve resilience and implement priority actions to adapt to climate change.
The program was created in 2017 as part of Governor Charlie Baker’s Executive Order 569 and has now committed $25 million since its inception to help communities prepare for climate change.
“Climate change is a challenge that will affect every city and town across the Commonwealth, and this funding announcement reflects our administration’s commitment to ensuring communities have the resources to protect their residents, infrastructure, and business from the growing impacts,” Baker said.
“Through our nation-leading MVP Program, and out legislative proposal to provide $1.3 billion over 10 years to invest in climate-smart infrastructure and nature-based solutions in communities, we look forward to continuing and growing our work to build more resilient communities.”
The $8 million made available will be used to fund MVP Planning and Action Grants.
Planning grants allow communities to work through a workshop process to identify key climate-realted hazards, vulnerabilities and strengths, develop adaptation actions, and prioritize next steps.
Results of the workshops and planning efforts are used to inform existing local plans, grant applications, budgets and policies.
Municipalities are designated as a “Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program Community” after successfully completing the program and are then eligible for MVP Action Grants.
Dennis, Harwich, Mashpee and Plymouth are local communities currently completing the MVP planning grant process.
Action grants fund the implementation of on-the-ground projects to address vulnerabilities to climate change identified by each community through the MVP planning process.
Projects are focused on proactive strategies to address climate change impacts and may include retrofitting and adapting infrastructure, detailed vulnerability assessments or design and engineering studies, stormwater upgrades, dam retrofits and removals, culver upgrades, drought mitigation, actions to protect and engage environmental justice communities and improve public health, energy resilience, and strategies that focus on implementing nature-based solutions such as wetland restoration and floodplain protection.
New project types during this round of grant funding including proactive mosquito control measures and subsidized low-income housing resiliency strategies.
Local designated MVP communities include Barnstable, Bourne, Brewster, Chatham, Chilmark, Eastham, Edgartown, Falmouth, Nantucket, Orleans, Provincetown, Sandwich, Tisbury, Truro, Wellfleet, Wareham, West Tisbury and Yarmouth.
Requests for Responses are open and close on Thursday, November 14.
The MVP Action Grants are open to all municipal governments in Massachusetts in FY20 that have received MVP designation.
Projects that proposed nature-based solutions or strategies that rely on green infrastructure or conservation and enhancement of natural systems to improve community resilience, in addition to projects that engage and benefit Environmental Justice and/or vulnerable communities receive higher scores.
MVP Planning grants are also open today through January 15, 2020 to communities seeking MVP designation with $1 million available in funding, and are reviewed on a rolling basis.///
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