A new $69 million federal grant will help Maine communities prepare to withstand the harsh impacts of climate change.
The money, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will support towns, cities and tribes planning for sea level rise, flooding and intense storms. Critical infrastructure, working waterfronts and vulnerable ecosystems are slated to get assistance through new and existing state programs.
The award is one of the biggest investments in climate resilience Maine has received, according to Governor Janet Mills. Using the funding, the state will move even more aggressively to address the effects of climate change, the governor said at a press conference in Portland.
"We will expand our efforts to make communities safer from extreme weather events, sea level rise, flooding rivers, rain, wind, extreme temperature and other effects of climate change," Mills said.
Money will be added to state programs such as the fund that assists towns and cities update and replace physical infrastructure and the partnership that helps plan and fund local climate focused projects.
But money will also be spent to strengthen the state's economically critical fishing ports and test nature-based solutions to protect shorelines, such as a dune rebuilding project at Popham Beach.
The state further intends to establish a resiliency office that would coordinate cross-agency efforts to assist communities especially vulnerable to climate change.
While the NOAA grant is focused on coastal Maine, funding will be available statewide, said Hannah Pingree, director of the Governor's Office of Policy Innovation and the Future. Inland communities are facing different but still severe impacts from a warming climate, she added.
"We have stretched it to make sure we are funding resilience all across our state because we know riverfront communities especially have faced extreme weather impacts, flooding and they need to prepare in the same way coastal communities are preparing for sea level rise," Pingree said.
And the funding will target assistance to towns that don't have the staff or resources to develop thorough plans to prepare for the impacts of climate change or chase funding to put them into action.
"Maine's smallest towns do not have the ability to manage federal grants, to apply for them. They know these issues are on their doorstep, they want to do something about them, but they need support, they need capacity, they need technical assistance to figure out what is the first thing that they should be doing," Pingree said.
The significant grant comes as Maine continues to rebuild from storms this winter that devastated waterfronts up and down the coast and washed away roads and bridges in the western part of the state.
This week the Mills administration recently delivered more than $21 million in grants to help critical waterfront facilities rebuild and strengthen after the storms.
Sen. Angus King at the press conference said the grant funding was a step towards recognizing the reality of climate change caused by greenhouse gas pollution.
"For the first time, we are talking about preventing and dealing with the damages of climate change instead of fixing them after they happen," King said.
Maine received one of just 19 awards from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climate resilience regional challenge. The program was funded with $575 million from the Infrastructure Reduction Act.
